''It seems like everyone connected
the dots here,'' WSVN-Fox 7 anchor Christine Cruz said during the sixth
hour of the marathon coverage of Friday's bomb scare on Alligator Alley.
``It seems like everyone did what they were supposed to be doing.''

Like a lot of what was said during
the coverage, that was about half right. Television reporters were certainly
connecting dots -- lots of dots, some of them seemingly from another planet
-- but if journalism is about facts and not hype, then they definitely
weren't doing what they were supposed to do.

Friday's coverage was the source
of a staggering amount of misinformation. Among the inaccurate reports:

* Several stations reported
that a woman in Georgia told police three Middle Easterners were coming
to Miami to blow something up. (That's not what she said.)

* Several also said cops
spotted the men after they roared past a tollbooth on I-75. (One car rolled
by at a normal rate of speed; the other stopped and paid the tolls for
both.)

* The cops used explosives
to detonate a suspicious knapsack found in one car. (They didn't.) Channel
7 reported that explosive ''triggers'' were found in one of the cars. (There
were no ''triggers'' or anything else to do with explosives.)

* Channel 7 also reported
that cops were searching for a third car. (They weren't.)

It was a wretched performance
-- worse yet, a wretched performance that dragged on for eight hours, terrorizing
South Florida and smearing the daylights out of three medical students
who can be counted on to contribute heavily to the next edition of the
travel guide What Sucks About South Florida.

''This is what is wrong with local
news,'' said Bill Pohovey, news director at WPLG-ABC 10, one of the two
stations that kept their perspective on the story and stuck with regular
programming. (WLTV-Univision 23 was the other.) ``This is why viewers get
disgusted with local news.''

My only quibble with Pohovey is
the word local. The worst parody of journalism Friday was actually on CNN,
where the high-paid-low-rated anchor Paula Zahn speculated, without a jot
or tittle of evidence, that the three men were coming to Florida to blow
up the Turkey Point nuclear reactor. Now you know why CNN promotes her
sex appeal rather than her news judgment.

Local stations at least had the
excuse that when you go live for six to eight hours, you've got to fill
up the airtime with something -- especially when the pictures are dull
shots of cops standing around empty automobiles. At best, that means stuff
will get on the air without being as thoroughly checked as it should be;
at worst, it means your telecast devolves into rampant speculation and
hype. We had plenty of both Friday.

The most egregious offender was
WSVN 7, where it sounded like the staff had to hold anchors Christine Cruz
and Tom Haynes back from storming onto the causeway and personally administering
lethal injections to the three detained men they'd already tried and convicted.

Over and over, the cops and public
officials interviewed by the station's reporters cautioned that there was
no physical evidence against the men (WSVN's false report of explosive
''triggers'' notwithstanding), they hadn't been arrested, and they weren't
even being called ''suspects'' yet. Over and over, Cruz and Haynes ignored
them.

''This story started as Sinister
Plot,'' Cruz warned darkly. ``Now it's become Attack on Miami.''

Haynes wondered whether ''these
guys, apparently on their way to Miami to do some harm to the city of Miami,''
were tied to al Qaeda. ''This looks like some loosely pulled together plot,''
he added. Later, he called them ``three men apparently on their way to
Miami with some ill intentions.''

Sometimes I seriously wondered
if Haynes was listening to his own station. At one point, WSVN aired an
interview with the Georgia woman who reported the three men to the police.
She described overhearing one man ask, ''Do you think we have enough to
bring it down?'' and another answering, ``If we don't have enough, I have
contacts. We can get enough to bring it down.''

Seconds after the interview ended,
Haynes summarized like this: Three men ''talking about driving down to
Miami and using some sort of explosive device to blow it up.'' How he read
all that into those two simple sentences, I'll never know. Though I'll
bet Paula Zahn can tell us.

A year ago today the first anthrax-laced
letters were mailed in the US, igniting something close to panic among
Americans facing their first terrorist attack with biological weapons.

The two letters, dropped into
a postbox in New Jersey, were headed for the New York Post and for Tom
Brokaw, the anchor at NBC News. Over the next months Americans would don
masks to open their mail and rush to fill prescriptions of the antibiotic
Cipro as additional letters went to other news organisations and to Democratic
political leaders.

By the time the letters stopped,
18 people were infected and five dead. The Washington DC mail sorting facility,
where two postal workers died of anthrax exposure, has yet to reopen.

But after a year of investigation,
US officials seem little closer to identifying the perpetrator. Their failure
has generated a host of conspiracy theories and produced an ideological
battle over whether the US has more to fear from Islamic extremists abroad
or rightwing zealots at home.

Conservative groups argue that
a foreign government most probably sponsored the attack, and continue to
point to Iraq as the only country with the means and the motive to carry
it out.

Liberal opponents of bioweapons
research say the attack was almost certainly an inside job, probably launched
by a disgruntled US weapons researcher intent on warning the country of
the dangers of a foreign biological attack.

The speculation has been encouraged
by the huge holes that remain in the investigation. So far, the only progress
has been technical. Scientists consulted by the government have identified
the anthrax as coming from the Ames strain. This strain - developed from
natural sources in the US - was first used in American bioweapons research
in the early 1980s and is probably available to weapons researchers in
the UK, Canada and Israel as well.

In addition, the letters sent
last year to Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, the Senate Democrats, contained
highly refined, dry powder anthrax that could be easily inhaled.

Producing such lethal anthrax
required advanced knowledge, equipment and working conditions, according
to a recent summary prepared by Milton Leitenberg, a bioterrorism expert
at the University of Maryland. But such conclusions have done little to
narrow the range of suspects.

"I've heard nothing that has changed
my mind," says Richard O. Spertzel, the former head of biological weapons
inspections for the United Nations inspections team in Iraq, who is persuaded
the anthrax attack involved active state sup port. "You could not possibly
make that quality of product in a clandestine fashion. It's not the sort
of thing you can do in your garage or in your basement."

He said the "floundering" of the
investigation - which has focused largely on domestic suspects - is because
investigators are "looking in the wrong place". That argument has received
a steady drumbeat of support from conservative publications such as the
Weekly Standard and the National Review, anxious to finger Iraq and bolster
the US argument for ousting Saddam Hussein.

On the other side, a group of
mostly liberal scientists has pushed the notion that the perpetrator came
from within the US weapons establishment.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular
biologist at the State University of New York, first promoted the theory
that the letters were the work of a disgruntled insider determined to demonstrate
his own expertise while warning the country of the threat of a bio-attack.

FBI investigators, too, have focused
on domestic suspects, saying that psychological profiles and the characteristics
of the anthrax indicate it was probably cooked up by a US biodefence scientist.
Fewer than 50 researchers fit that profile.

Last month those suspicions converged
on Steven Hatfill, a 48-year-old former researcher at the US Army Medical
Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Maryland, which works with
the Ames strain of anthrax. Mr Hatfill, identified by the FBI only as a
"person of interest" before they raided his apartment last month, appeared
to fit Ms Rosenberg's theory precisely. But Mr Hatfill has vigorously maintained
his innocence against what he charges is a public smear campaign launched
by ideological opponents.

"This assassination of my character
appears to be part of a government-run effort to show the American people
that it is proceeding vigorously and successfully with the anthrax investigation,"
said Mr Hatfill last month.

Underlying all the accusations,
however, lies the much bigger question of how the US should be defending
itself against future biological attacks by terrorists, when it still knows
so little about who launched the last.

Since the anthrax scare, Washington
has approved more than $6bn (€6.2bn) in new spending, much of which
will go to defensive research on bioweapons. The National Institutes of
Health, for instance, plans to double the number of facilities it has to
study the most dangerous pathogens.

If the threat is from abroad,
the new money should indeed help the US strengthen its defences against
attack. But if the threat is at home, argues Eileen Choffnes of the National
Academy of Sciences, the money will simply expand the number of people
with access to deadly germs and the knowledge of how to use them. "This,"
she says, "is a recipe for disaster."

US
in biological weapons warningBy Stephen Fidler in LondonPublished: September 18 2002
17:26 | Last Updated: September 18 2002 17:26

The US has threatened to name
countries it says are trying to develop biological weapons if an official
conference to discuss the Biological Weapons Convention later this year
is not cut short.

In a blunt message to Western
governments, the Bush administration also said it would oppose any further
official meetings under the convention's auspices until the next scheduled
review of the treaty in 2006.

The move is designed in part to
forestall public criticism of Washington for its opposition to strengthening
the convention.

The US position calling for a
"very short" conference in November was disclosed in "talking points" handed
to western governments in Geneva this month.

The document was distributed on
an electronic discussion forum on chemical and biological weapons run by
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"A prolonged meeting would generate
into a heated battle, which will detract from the positive efforts already
under way to combat the scourge of [bioweapons]. In this case, the US would
be forced to name countries we believe are not complying with their obligations
and would need to press for explicit termination of the Ad Hoc group,"
the document said.

The 2001 review of the treaty
was adjourned in disarray last November for 12 months, following a stormy
session in which the US named four alleged violators of the treaty, Iraq,
Iran, North Korea and Libya. Two others, Syria and Sudan, not parties to
the treaty, also were alleged to have bioweapons programmes.

The US has said more than a dozen
countries have bioweapons programmes, though it was not clear whether the
US was threatening to name countries beyond those so far mentioned.

The US also said that if the November
meeting was allowed to drag on, it would use the time to press for the
explicit termination of the so-called Ad Hoc Group set up to negotiate
a new protocol to the BWC. That proposed protocol, opposed by the US but
backed by most western governments, would add verification procedures to
the convention.

The talking points said the US
believed the sole purpose of the N ovember meeting should be to agree to
hold another review conference in 2006. But in an interview with the FT
at the weekend, John Bolton, under-secretary of state for arms control,
said he would be open to a broader agreement, incorporating US and other
ideas about how to deal with the threat - providing its terms were agreed
beforehand.

BOCA RATON -- When FBI investigators
came out of the quarantined National Enquirer building during their two-week
anthrax search here, area residents were assured the agents were immediately
washed down to decontaminate their protective suits.

But few people outside the tight-lipped
circle of federal investigators and scientists knew that the decontaminated
anthrax runoff was dumped into Boca Raton's sewer system and then made
its way to the municipal water-treatment plant.

Some of that runoff was recycled
into reclaimed water that's designated by state law for irrigation. It
would have ended up sprinkling the emerald lawns of the Royal Palm Yacht
& Country Club, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Community Hospital
and others among the 600 customers who are hooked up to reclaimed irrigation
water in the city.

Any anthrax spores that might
have clung to a protective suit and escaped from the American Media Inc.
building would have been chemically treated and killed after the wash down,
posing no public safety threat, said Boca Raton Utility Services Director
Mike Woika.

Most of the runoff was pumped
out to the ocean through a pipe that discharges treated waste water 1 mile
out at sea, Woika said. None was mixed with the city's drinking water,
which comes from 56 wells.

"Everything that we did, we wanted
to make sure that our system and our residents were protected," Woika said.

The details of the decontamination
procedure were so guarded that not even the mayor or city council knew
that lifeless anthrax spores would flow through the sewer system into the
municipal water-treatment plant.

The procedures were worked out
by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in the wake of last year's anthrax mailings that killed
five people, including an AMI photo editor. The disposal procedures were
first tried out here in October when federal agents tested for anthrax
in the AMI building at the Arvida Park of Commerce.

As federal officials were formalizing
their decontamination and drainage procedures into a national response
plan, AMI executives were unsuccessfully arguing that the federal government
take over the building and clean it up. The supermarket tabloid publisher
commissioned a cleanup cost estimate from an environmental consulting firm,
which advised AMI in April that no toxic waste site in the country would
accept anthrax waste.

The FBI declined to comment on
the cleanup methods. But Woika said all the runoff tested negative for
anthrax before it was drained into a sewer on the AMI site on Broken Sound
Boulevard. On the FBI's "advice," Woika said, he could not show the test
results.

"Generally, there's some secrecy
involved with the FBI investigation, or what's construed as the investigation,"
Woika said.

After last year's anthrax attacks,
the federal government moved quickly to develop new bioterrorism protocols
in case of future attacks. Boca Raton, the site of the nation's first attack
at the AMI building, became the de facto testing ground for many of those
new techniques.

Inside the three-story AMI building,
the FBI prepared to plot three-dimensional maps to trace the distribution
patterns of anthrax throughout the 68,000 square foot office.

Outside, the AMI site would serve
as a laboratory to test the "containment, disinfection and discharge of
suspected anthrax contaminated water, including protocols and standards,"
Woika said in an April memo to City Manager Leif Ahnell.

"The AMI incident initiated the
need for a national policy," Woika wrote, "and the City of Boca Raton's
actions in this incident is being used as their model."

The FBI, assisted by scientists
from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, entered the
building more than 550 times, removing nearly 5,000 pieces of evidence,
including more than 800 letters contaminated by anthrax.

Each time the teams emerged, they
entered a setup resembling a shower and were hosed down, Woika said. The
runoff was collected in tanks of 500 gallons and 1,000 gallons in capacity.
The liquid was disinfected with high concentrations of chlorine.

In all, Woika said, less than
3,500 gallons were collected and disinfected during the search, which was
conducted from Aug. 27 to Sept. 8. The city's water treatment plant processes
about 15 million gallons of water a day, Woika said.

The vats, all testing negative
for anthrax, were slowly drained into a sewer, Woika said.

Dr. Larry Bush, the JFK Medical
Center physician who treated Sun photo editor Bob Stevens for anthrax,
said the feds' disinfection system is safe for a number of reasons.

Very few anthrax spores would
have stuck to the protective suits and come out of the building, said Bush,
who is director of infectious diseases at the Atlantis hospital.

Those few spores would have been
killed by the chlorine and then diluted into oblivion by millions of gallons
of water.

Even if a spore survived and was
somehow swallowed, it would have been ineffective against humans, he said.

"You'd have to swallow a huge
amount of spores -- thousands to hundreds of thousands," to get sick from
gastrointestinal anthrax, Bush said. Stevens died Oct. 5 of inhalational
anthrax.

Anthrax spores exist naturally,
in the soil and in the wool of sheep and in goat hair, but natural inhalation
of anthrax leading to illness is rare.

Whether inhalation or gastrointestinal
anthrax, it would take such large quantities to create conditions for one
spore to be able to reproduce itself faster than the body's immune system
can counter-attack, said Martin Hugh-Jones, a veterinary epidemiologist
at Louisiana State University.

Hugh-Jones said dumping the anthrax
runoff in city sewers is "no problem."

"Yeah, put it in your flower bed
and get some fertilizer out of it," he said.

Staff researcher
Krista Pegnetter contributed to this story.

Proof
of 'person of interest' sought Ashcroft asked
to define term in anthrax probe

By Toni LocyUSA TODAYSept. 19, 2002

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. senator has
asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to explain his repeated description
of former Army scientist Steven Hatfill as ''a person of interest'' in
the probe into last year's deadly anthrax attacks.

In a letter to Ashcroft on Wednesday,
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sought written proof of the existence of Justice
Department policies that define the term ''person of interest'' and explain
its use.

Veteran FBI agents say they are
unfamiliar with the term.

Ashcroft has used it in news conferences
and in several television appearances to explain the focus on Hatfill,
48, a former researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

Hatfill was one of about 40 scientists
in the USA who had both access to anthrax and the expertise on how to handle
it.

Five people died and 22 others
were infected last fall when five letters were mailed to the media and
two U.S. senators. Hatfill has been the focus of an ongoing investigation
and has complained about Ashcroft's description. He also blames Justice
officials for his firing on Sept. 3 from a department-funded bioterrorism
training program at Louisiana State University.

Grassley, a frequent FBI critic,
said he has ''no views'' about the FBI's focus on Hatfill.

''It is important that the government
act according to laws, rules, policies and procedures, rather than make
arbitrary decisions that affect individual citizens,'' he said.

Pat Clawson, a spokesman for Hatfill,
said Grassley's questions are ''right on target and go to the core of the
abuses of civil liberties here.''

Traditionally, the FBI has used
terms such as ''suspect,'' ''subject'' and ''target'' to describe people
under investigation. The terms are used at different stages of a probe
and differ legally.

A USA TODAY search of the U.S.
Attorneys' Manual -- the handbook for federal prosecutors -- on the Justice
Department's Web site Wednesday yielded no hits on the term ''person of
interest.''

The manual contains several references
to suspects, subjects and targets. A suspect is used generally to describe
anyone who comes under suspicion by law enforcement. A subject is defined
as ''a person whose conduct is within the scope'' of a grand jury probe.
A target is ''a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has
substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime.''

Grassley asked Ashcroft to provide
examples of others who have been publicly named in the past three years
as ''a person of interest'' in an investigation.

The senator also requested information
about Justice's policy on seeking the removal of a person from a department-funded
program.

BIOTERRORISM

Anthrax
Attacks Pushed Open an Ominous Door

By BARBARA HATCH ROSENBERGBarbara Hatch Rosenberg, a research
professor of molecular biology at State University of New York at Purchase,
chairs the Federation of American Scientists Working Group on Biological
Weapons.

September 22 2002

PURCHASE, N.Y. -- On this first
anniversary of the anthrax attacks, a number of conclusions can be drawn
even without an arrest by the FBI. First, the strain and properties of
the weaponized anthrax found in the letters show that it originated within
the U.S. biodefense program, where the necessary expertise and access are
found. Government officials recognized that the anthrax source was domestic
less than two weeks after they learned of the letters, and nothing in their
investigation has led them to say otherwise since.

One can also conclude that, given
the origin of the anthrax and the warnings contained in the letters, the
perpetrator's motive was not to kill but rather to raise public fear and
thereby spur Congress to increase spending on biodefense. In this, the
attacks have been phenomenally successful.

Paradoxically, however, by breaking
the taboo on using biological weapons, the attacks have engendered a threat
that could dwarf Sept. 11. Modes of successful attack and public responses
have now been demonstrated for the instruction of future terrorists. What's
more, it seems to have been easy to hide incriminating evidence, and, after
a whole year of FBI bumbling, it looks likely that the attacker will get
away with the crime. Although the death toll was relatively low, the strikes
crippled business, government and postal services. Contamination in buildings
has proved difficult, costly and time-consuming to remove, with some facilities
still not restored; the public health system was strained beyond capacity.

Although biodefense has gotten
a shot in the arm, it is important to understand that the goal of defending
against bioweapons is not primarily public protection--which is largely
impossible, as last year's attacks demonstrated. It is rather "to allow
the military forces of the United States to survive and successfully complete
their operational missions ... in battlespace environments contaminated
with chemical or biological warfare agents," according to the annual report
of the Department of Defense's Chemical and Biological Defense Program.

Biological weapons are preeminently
anti-population weapons. But it would be impossible to provide the entire
country with protective suits, masks, detectors, shelters, training and
vaccinations against the large and growing array of potential agents. In
any event, vaccinations can have serious side effects and can be overcome
if the dose of the pathogenic agent is large or if the agent has been engineered
to evade the vaccine.

Instead of protection, the civil
defense response is entirely concerned with limiting the damage should
an attack occur. There are also paradoxes here. Because of the rush to
"do something," large amounts of government money are being thrown, without
sufficient forethought, at research involving potential biological weapons
agents. Scientists go where the money is, and we're now seeing a crowd
of biologists lacking in relevant experience trooping to the trough.

The number of research laboratories
and personnel handling dangerous pathogens is about to mushroom, making
oversight and adequate safety and security control much more difficult
to impose--particularly with the increased emphasis on secrecy. Ultimately,
the very problem that made the anthrax attacks possible will be magnified.

One can confidently expect the
U.S. to squander resources that could far better be used to extend the
modest improvements being made in the public health system. Natural outbreaks
of disease, including rapidly emerging new diseases for which we are unprepared,
are a far more likely hazard for most people. Improving the public health
system's ability to respond would help combat these diseases as well as
biological attacks.

The anthrax probe has disclosed
an astounding degree of irresponsibility and lack of security at Ft. Detrick,
Md., home to the nation's premier existing biodefense laboratory. The problems
stretch back for decades and extend beyond the anthrax attacks. In spite
of a security crackdown there following the attacks, two incidents have
occurred this year at Ft. Detrick in which spores escaped from a high-containment
laboratory and were found in hallways, offices and locker rooms. One case
was recognized only when an unauthorized employee took swabs outside the
laboratory to check for anthrax contamination--something no one had thought
of doing there before.

The anthrax investigation has
raised questions about the nature and value of the work at Ft. Detrick
and has brought to light the granting of security clearance and free access
to highly dangerous biological agents to someone with falsified credentials--very
disturbing whether or not he turns out to be the perpetrator of the anthrax
attacks.

Even more serious concerns have
been raised by the discovery of secret biodefense projects that push against
the limits of international prohibitions. It was recently revealed that
an Army laboratory in Utah has been secretly making weaponized anthrax
for some years. Another secret project involved the construction of bomblets
designed for dispersion of biological agents, although the Biological Weapons
Convention explicitly prohibits developing, producing or possessing "means
of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes."
Such projects have raised suspicions abroad that the U.S. continues to
develop biological weapons--suspicions that, even if not true, are likely
to spur a new biological arms race.

Experts agree that a significant
bioterror attack today would require the support of a national program
to succeed. But for two years now, the U.S. has opposed every international
effort to monitor the ban on the development and possession of biological
weapons by states or to strengthen the toothless Biological Weapons Convention
in any way.

The anthrax attacks have not altered
that stance. Two weeks ago, I attended an informal meeting in Geneva where
diplomats from six continents struggled in the face of U.S. intransigence
to map out a joint strategy for combating the global biological threat.
The United States had demanded that a formal Biological Weapons Convention
conference, scheduled to take place during two weeks in November, should
instead disband in one day with only an agreement not to meet again until
2006. To make sure that the American resolve prevails in this setting where
international consensus is de rigueur, the U.S. demand was accompanied
by an overt threat to disrupt any further proceedings with accusations
that would make productive international action impossible.

At that Geneva meeting, the assembled
diplomats, representing the political spectrum from our closest allies
to declared enemies, were uniformly frustrated. They find it hard to comprehend
why a country that has just been the victim of bioterrorism should stand
in the way of peaceful efforts supported by all its allies to deter bioterrorism.

It is surprising how quickly public
terror in response to the anthrax attacks turned to public indifference.
But the story isn't over. The likelihood of bioterrorism is increasing,
and the American public is still the preferred target. Government decisions
will be critical in determining the sequel. The preservation of public
health and safety, like freedom, will now require public vigilance.

from the
September 24, 2002 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0924/p11s02-lehl.html

Academia
becomes target for new security laws

Foreign students have helped propel
the research for which US universities are famous. New security concerns
could limit their ability to contribute.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer
of The Christian Science Monitor

When William Stwalley got word
this summer about what had happened to his foreign graduate students, the
usually mild-mannered physics professor could barely keep himself in his
chair. He was livid.

Just over a year ago, he had traveled
to Beijing to interview candidates for the University of Connecticut's
graduate research program in physics this fall. But of the nine students
accepted into the program, all were denied a student visa by the US State
Department.

In the past, most applicants got
a green light. But since Sept. 11, visa "horror stories" have popped up
at universities nationwide, many say.

Such snafus may seem unremarkable
in the wake of intensified concerns about foreigners entering the US under
false pretenses. But they are just the most visible sign of a deeper shift
taking place in higher education as the nation pushes for more safety and
security in a post-9/11 world.

Academia is suddenly finding itself
a central target of new security laws and regulations. To some, the greater
scrutiny is natural, given that universities are home to many foreign students
and much potentially sensitive research. But as fall semester gets under
way, university scientists worry that freedom of inquiry, open access,
and internationalization – long valued in US higher education – are at
risk.

They say such security measures,
though well intentioned, could undermine the free flow of intellectual
exchange – both on campus and with researchers abroad – that has made US
higher education a huge winner internationally. Tight security could also
slow the work of labs that rely on foreign students as researchers or that
have long-established ties with foreign counterparts.

"We're seeing a fundamental clash
of values between university openness and national security interested
in clamping down," says Eugene Skolnikoff, professor emeritus of political
science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There's this push
by government, saying, 'We've got to keep information out of the wrong
hands.' Universities are essentially being asked to exclude foreign students
from some projects."

One observer points to dozens
of bills proposed in Congress since Sept. 11 with features that restrict
higher education. The White House has its own plans, too. Key developments
include:

* A category of "sensitive
information" being developed mainly for nonclassified, government-owned
research. Some worry it could easily be expanded to include other government-funded
university research.

* The Bioterrorism Preparedness
Act – passed in June – which mandates tighter scrutiny and background checks
for microbiologists working with any of 36 pathogens on the US list of
"select agents."

* A government panel to
review visa applications of foreign students applying for advanced study
in fields including lasers, high-performance metals, navigation and guidance
systems, nuclear engineering, biotechnology, and missile propulsion.

Stunting basic research

About 550,000 foreign students
study in the US – double the number from 15 years ago – and about half
of US engineering PhDs are foreign-born. Such restrictions will sharply
curb today's influx of foreign graduate students, stunting the basic research
that undergirds America's technology-driven economy, some argue.

"We can't fill our own schools
with people from the US," says Bruce Alberts, president of the National
Academy of Sciences. "They're just not coming through the system, not willing
to work that hard. Higher education has been one of our greatest exports.
If we give foreign graduate students the impression they're not welcome
or they are second-class citizens, then we'll repel a lot of that talent."

The new Interagency Panel for
Advanced Science and Security (IPASS), which includes law-enforcement officials,
will weigh applicants' countries of origin, area of study, and previous
education, along with the nature of the research. When the panel is up
and running, about 2,000 foreign nationals will be scrutinized each year
out of roughly 500,000 applicants, officials say.

"Universities have concerns [about
new security laws], but most of these haven't translated into real concerns
yet," says John Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy, which has been working with universities on limiting
the impact of security regulations on higher education. "One area we are
working on is the backlog on visas [for foreign students and researchers]....
It has had some impact that we're concerned about."

Some in the higher-education community
are relieved the focus will be on identifying individuals before they get
a visa – rather than fencing off whole fields of study to foreigners.

"A lot of these policies are just
getting put into place now, and it's going to take a while to assess how
serious their impacts are," says Al Teich, director of science and policy
programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which
represents 135,000 scientists and engineers. "It's not just visas. Restrictions
on publishing scientific papers – nonclassified basic research – are of
great concern because then you're restricting the lifeblood of science
and higher education."

Under the new laws, colleges have,
so far, won exemptions from publishing restrictions for basic and applied
university research. Still, Dr. Skolnikoff and others cite a threat from
potential and actual new restrictions.

Some constraints
aren't new

Some constraints on foreign scholars'
access to basic research have been around for years. Export controls on
research developed in the space sciences are one example. But in other
disciplines, such as microbiology, the rules are only beginning to be felt
on campus.

Students from the seven nations
the US State Department lists as sponsors of terrorism will find it tougher
to do university research in microbiology. There were 3,761 students last
year from Libya, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Cuba. The list
could be expanded to a second tier of restricted countries, observers say.

The new Bioterrorism Act and the
USA Patriot Act provide criminal penalties for anyone possessing select
biological agents or delivery systems not justified by "bona fide research."
And "restricted persons," including faculty, students, or staff from nations
on the terror list, may not possess, transport, or even see secretarial
paperwork regarding them.

But more rules are coming. Acting
on a request by Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, the Office of Management
and Budget is drafting rules for a new sensitive-information category for
government-owned research, less secret than classified information, but
still restricted. Such rules could spill over to other government-funded
research on campus.

"These regulations could have
a chilling effect on the very research the university community is being
asked to do to develop countermeasures to terrorist weapons," says Janet
Shoemaker, director of public affairs for the American Society for Microbiology
in Washington. "We have to have reasonable balance."

Dr. Alberts, of the National Academy
of Sciences, worries about censorship and even self-censorship developing
in university labs. The NAS is convening a conference on the topic this
fall. Likewise, the American Association of University Professors in Washington
last week created a special committee to analyze "conflicts between the
imperatives of national security and the imperatives of free researching."

Some see risk, some
see benefit

But where some academics see a
risk of science being entangled in red tape, others see value in creating
a balance between openness and rules to ensure that the wrong people don't
gain access to scientific information that might be used to create terror
weapons.

"We don't see research being shut
down," says George Leventhal, senior federal-relations officer with the
Association of American Universities. "My impression is that the [Bush]
administration has made reasonable efforts when the regulations have affected
the academic community."

Richard Harpel, director of federal
relations for the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant
Colleges, worries about damaging research. Still, "not all of this is bad,"
he says. "Many of those [restricted] select agents have been lurking in
the back of refrigerators for decades. If for no other reason than housecleaning,
this is worthy of our efforts."

Such housecleaning was the undoing
of Tomas Foral, a University of Connecticut graduate student who, in July,
became the first person charged under the Patriot Act with unlawful possession
of anthrax.

Mr. Foral came across the substance,
left over from 1960s experiments, while helping clean out a laboratory
freezer last October. Graduate students are drilled to save specimens.
In this case, however, university officials claim Foral was ordered to
dispose of it but did not. FBI agents later found two vials in his section
of a freezer at the Storrs campus.

The Czech-born US citizen has
hired a lawyer. He is being investigated by his university and his name
has been added to a watch list. "I think this is going a little bit too
far," Foral told the L.A. Times. "I saved many other tissues that day.
This is one of the samples that I saved. That's all that happened."

Intentional or not, his story
has become a cautionary tale. "We're going to feel these restrictions more
as time goes on as part of an internal self-conscious worry – and from
more government oversight," says Ronald Atlas, a microbiologist and dean
of the graduate school at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
"The international exchange of information in the biological sciences may
become more regulated. The impact could range from nil to major. I think
the inability of researchers overseas to collaborate or come to the US
or to publish results would be major."

The Bioterrorism Preparedness
Act, signed into law by President Bush in June, is so new its final regulations
won't be done until December. But the act makes clear it is not just students
who will be under the federal microscope: Colleges and universities as
institutions will be scrutinized, too. The Department of Health and Human
Services will inspect college labs to ensure compliance with select agent
possession, use, transfer, and security requirements.

Universities and colleges already
had to scramble to meet a Sept. 10 deadline to notify federal authorities
if they had any of the 36 select agents, pathogens like ebola or anthrax.
Under the new law, institutions also must limit access to researchers and
students with a "legitimate need." The American Council on Education says
this shift "represents a major compliance challenge."

But to the Bush administration,
pressing for such changes is not unreasonable. "Everybody should be vigilant
about maintaining the openness necessary for effective scientific research,"
Dr. Marburger says. "It can't be carried out in a closed community....
You know, I think it's a very healthy posture for the higher-education
community to be alert [to security threats].... Universities have been
helpful in working with my office and working on some good ideas."

To Professor Skolnikoff and others,
such steps may presage curbs that could critically undermine higher education.
In space sciences, for instance, it's a delicate dance to comply with International
Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which are Reagan-era export controls
on technology. In March, the State Department tightened ITAR controls,
further limiting a higher-education exemption that permits communicating
about research with foreign colleagues if they are from NATO countries.
Besides being difficult to understand, such rules leave researchers fearing
fines or jail for discussions with foreign colleagues.

The result: University scientists
often feel compelled to apply for export licenses when doing collaborative
research with foreign graduate students and faculty. They might even drop
the experiment because of the hassle.

John Mester, a senior physicist
with Stanford University, is working on a satellite-based experiment overshadowed
by ITAR controls. He hopes the experiment, to be launched next spring,
will spot where Einstein's general theory of relatively breaks down by
measuring gravity fluctuations in space. "I'm very concerned that they
might restrict access to foreign nationals and to what research people
can publish in open literature," he says.

He is also working on another
satellite-based experiment in collaboration with European researchers.
He worries it may not get NASA funding due to tighter ITAR controls.

Dr. Mester recalls, too, the example
of past graduate students Haiping Jin, a South Korean, and Peter Wiktor,
a German. The two worked on the gravity project a few years ago and helped
produce a breakthrough in thruster research. Their research was handed
over to an aerospace company, which built the research satellite with thruster
technology based directly on the duo's work.

Still, neither foreign student
ever got to see the actual thrusters or even their designs. Both men were
nonresidents and barred under ITAR rules from seeing the technology.

Dr. Mester says excluding foreign
students from seeing the fruits of their labor is unfortunate, but not
critical to knowledge building, or their dissertations. "The students are
really at the core of what we do here," Mester says. "If we were to restrict
their access, it would have a huge impact. We couldn't even develop all
the technology we've got now. We've been walking a fine line to satisfy
both Stanford's openness requirement and the government restrictions."

In the end, professors and students
hope the open door will prevail.

Chun Tai, a former student in
UCLA's department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, graduated this
spring and now works for a private company. "My view of a great America
is that it should be the way it was before [9/11]," Mr. Tai says. "The
top people from all over the world come here because most agree this is
the best place to work together. If the government closes the door on people
like me, it would be sad. They can do that, but that's not the American
way."

Restrictions frustrate
foreign students

Even in the go-go 1990s, bright
foreigners had to work hard to get visas to become graduate students in
the United States. But the bureaucratic hurdles since 9/11 are now so difficult
that many will seek to attend university elsewhere, many say.

Just ask Xiaoyong Wang, a graduate
student in mechanical engineering at the University of California at Los
Angeles. He got into the US to study before the attacks – but now his friends,
who thought they would follow, are stuck back in China.

"I know it is getting harder because
this year, some of my friends got the offer from the universities, but
they couldn't get a visa from the embassy," he says.

In a sign of the times, Chinese
students turned down for US student visas held rare public protests twice
last month at the US Embassy in Beijing. The increasing difficulty of getting
US student visas is just beginning to be documented.

The Institute of International
Education in New York reports that students may choose Canada, Britain,
and Australia instead of the US because of these visa issues. The American
Physical Society says early results of an e-mail survey of 184 physics
departments indicates Chinese students are having the worst problems.

But don't tell that to Mohammed
Alsaid, a Saudi Arabian student pursuing his PhD in computer science at
the University of Southern California. Like many from the Middle East,
he has a visa "horror story."

"My two friends were already students
at USC for three of four years," he says. "They have apartments here, cars
here, but when they went back to Saudi Arabia to renew their visas and
see their families, they got stuck."

Those students have been neither
approved nor denied, but just told to wait, he says. Mr. Alsaid thinks
the visa slowdown will harm US higher education.

"I never thought of going to Europe
when I planned to get my master's," he says. "We all believed the US has
the best education in science and engineering. This [slowdown] is going
to [mean that students] go elsewhere. I totally understand the US position,
though. They have to be careful."

Roshanak Roshandel is an Iranian
graduate student also in USC's computer-science department. Hailing from
a nation on the US State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism,
she is familiar with all the background checks. It took her six weeks to
pass an FBI check in 1996. She says other students she knows in Iran despair
of ever getting to the US. "Almost all the Iranian students I know who
came here as graduate students have had a hard time."

She has a green card that used
to allow her to view restricted data as part of her research for a branch
of the US government. Now an escort takes her to the data.

"It would be impossible for the
[US] Department of Defense to do all the research they need without foreign
students," she says. "They need us."

Self-censorship
on the horizon

It was the 1940s, and Hitler's
Germany was racing to build an atom bomb. Sensing the Germans were on the
wrong trail, and not wanting to help, American university scientists collectively
did the nearly unthinkable: They all but stopped publishing about nuclear
physics.

Flash forward to this summer.
Amid the new "war on terror," a university researcher discovers how to
create the polio virus with mail-order materials and a genetic blueprint.
Another discovers how to modify a smallpox-like virus, making it more virulent.
Both publish their findings in scholarly journals.

Debate flares. Might not terrorists
use such research as a cookbook to create more dangerous biological weapons,
policymakers wonder?

A few microbiologists are already
asking journals if they can publish their research but omit the methods
that others would need to know to reproduce experiments, says Ronald Atlas,
president of the American Society for Microbiology. That idea, he says,
is a "nonstarter." It would prevent peer review and undermine science.

Still, Dr. Atlas has called for
serious debate about security and self-censorship within the academy. The
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) plans to host a November conference
to debate such issues. And the American Association of University Professors
announced last week it would create a committee to review the impact of
new security laws on academic freedom.

A key concern: government censorship.
This summer, the Department of Defense circulated a 111-page draft directive
outlining criminal sanctions for open discussions of certain types of research
on campus. The draft was buried, its recommendations too controversial
even within the Pentagon. It's the sort of thing that makes many shudder.

"Our nation's security depends
on the balance between openness and security," says NAS president Bruce
Alberts. "We have to get that balance right."

One
year later: anthrax probe seems stalled

By JOAN LOWYSeptember 25, 2002

On Oct. 4, 2001, a nation still
reeling from a horrific act of terrorism on U.S. soil awoke to a new nightmare
- bioterrorism - as authorities in Florida announced the verification of
a case of suspicious anthrax.

Over the next few weeks, deadly
spores from anthrax-filled letters sent to the news media and the Senate
killed five people, infected 18 others, forced the virtual shutdown of
Congress, wreaked havoc on the U.S. Postal Service, sent thousands of panicked
Americans scrambling for the antibiotic Cipro, and spurred the government
to launch a massive expansion of biodefense programs.

One year later, no one has been
arrested in the anthrax attacks and the FBI's investigation into the case
appears to have stalled. Critics of the FBI probe fear that other
would-be bioterrorists may be encouraged by the fact that the attacker
has eluded authorities.

"A how-to message has been sent
to future bioterrorists and the only way to combat that is to show you
can't get away with that," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist
at the State University of New York at Purchase and chair of the Federation
of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Arms Control Program.
"We haven't done that and that concerns me greatly."

In the immediate aftermath of
the anthrax attacks, many experts insisted the letters were most likely
the work of a terrorist group that had acquired the anthrax germ from a
state-sponsored bioweapons program. The weaponized condition of the anthrax
spores in the envelopes, they reasoned, indicated an attacker with sophisticated
knowledge of anthrax, a complex set of skills, and access to specialized
equipment.

The Islamic and anti-American
rhetoric in the text of the letters - dated Sept. 11, but not mailed until
Sept. 18 from a postal box near Princeton, N.J. - were clearly an attempt
to tie the anthrax attacks to the 9/11 attacks.

However, the FBI investigation
was soon narrowed to a search for a domestic perpetrator, most likely a
lone individual in the biodefense field. The anthrax in the letters was
identified as the Ames strain, which was originally isolated in the United
States and adopted by the U.S. biodefense program in the late 1970s as
the anthrax strain-of-choice, although it was also shared with Great Britain,
Canada and Israel.

The spores in the letters were
also coated with a chemical used in the U.S. biodefense program to keep
them from clumping. Other state bioweapons programs tended to use a different
chemical.

Criminal profilers say the wording
of the anthrax messages appears to be the work of a native English speaker
trying to throw suspicion on Islamic terrorists in an effort to disguise
his identity.

Clint Van Zandt, a 25-year veteran
of the FBI and a former supervisor of the agency's criminal profiling unit,
sees parallels between the anthrax attacker and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

The anthrax attacker is "somebody
cut out of a similar bolt of cloth who did it for purposes he thought were
greater than himself," said Van Zandt, now a private consultant.

"Kaczynski tried to warn about
the dangers of technology. McVeigh tried to warn about excesses on the
part of government, and the anthrax sender, I believe, did it because he
felt the United States was not responsive (to the threat of bioterrorism)."

Rosenberg also has postulated
that the anthrax attacker was a disgruntled biodefense scientist trying
to send a message about the threat of bioterrorism and the need to beef
up America's biodefenses.

Rosenberg laid out her theory
for key Senate staffers and the FBI at a closed-door meeting on Capitol
Hill in June. Rosenberg said she has never named any individual as a possible
suspect, but after the meeting the FBI appeared to step up its investigation
of Steven Hatfill, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., the
government's principal biodefense laboratory. Hatfill's apartment
has been searched three times and so have his girlfriend's apartment and
a storage locker he keeps in Florida.

Hatfill has denied any involvement
in the attacks. His supporters have accused the FBI of persecuting the
scientist to deflect attention from the agency's lack of progress in the
case.

Meanwhile, Congress has approved
more than $6 billion in new biodefense research and preparedness since
the attacks.

The rapid expansion of biodefense
programs has some scientists questioning whether the government's response
to bioterrorism will inadvertently increase the likelihood of future attacks
by greatly boosting the number of researchers with access to dangerous
pathogens and the skill to turn them into weapons.

The rapid expansion of research
has not been accompanied by a corresponding tightening of security, said
Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University.

Ebright said the only national
restrictions on who can work with dangerous pathogens like anthrax are:
No illegal aliens, no citizens of countries that sponsor terrorism, no
convicted felons, no admitted or convicted drug users, and no one who has
been judged mentally incompetent or confined to a mental institution.

"This actually represents less
vetting than required to operate a school bus in many parts of the country,"
Ebright said. The government has for decades imposed far greater security
limitations on nuclear scientists, for example, than on scientists in the
biodefense field.

In part, that's because in biodefense,
the knowledge required to defend against dangerous germs is nearly the
same as the knowledge required to turn them into deadly weapons, said David
Heyman, director of science and security initiatives at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.

"If we're going to do a lot of
research which we haven't done in the past we need to have some sort of
self-governance mechanism or an oversight mechanism to make sure that research
that has clear national security implications doesn't fall into the wrong
hands or is compromised," Heyman said. "That doesn't exist today."

On the Web:American Federation
of Scientists - www.fas.orgCenter for Strategic
and International Studies - www.csis.org

The bloodhounds were "barking
and howling and straining at their leashes." That was the sensational lead
to a Newsweek story that has become one of the particulars in the public
"indictment" of Dr. Steven Hatfill for last fall's unsolved anthrax killings.
Newsweek said that the FBI took bloodhounds to Hatfill's Maryland apartment
in early August. It claims a law enforcement official told them, "They
went crazy." Not surprisingly, Newsweek's story was picked up and replayed
as far away as Qatar. But is the story accurate?

Newsweek reported that the bloodhounds
matched scent lifted from the anthrax letters to Hatfill. Newsweek said
that the dogs also "reacted" at his girlfriend's apartment and a Denny's
restaurant in Louisiana. Newsweek reporters told AIM that the FBI had employed
a "new technology" to collect scent that involves "vacuuming" it onto a
sterile gauze pad directly from the letters. The FBI told Newsweek that
the Bureau does not have its own dogs and had flown in bloodhounds for
use by the Washington Field Office.

Hatfill says that Newsweek's description
of the dog's visit to his apartment is inaccurate. He says that the Bureau
took him to an empty apartment in his complex and directed him to one of
three chairs. A bloodhound was brought in and Hatfill, a dog lover, scratched
the dog's ears. When the dog began to return the affection, an agent started
screaming "the dog is reacting, the dog is reacting!" Also, a Baltimore
Sun reporter determined that none of the twelve Denny's in Louisiana had
been visited by the FBI and bloodhounds.

AIM contacted a national training
coordinator of the Law Enforcement Bloodhounds Association (LEBA), a police
officer with fifteen years of experience handling bloodhounds, about Newsweek's
story. He and his dog form one of fifteen teams, all from the law enforcement
community in the part of Maryland that includes Hatfill's apartment. Among
this group is a team on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team call list that participated
in the search for suspected Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. None were called
upon by the FBI in this case and they too have been wondering whose dogs
were used. The LEBA training coordinator confirmed that the FBI doesn't
have its own dogs, never uses volunteers, and always contracts with local
law enforcement dog teams in such cases.

Asked about the "new technology,"
the officer laughed and said that the reference was to a "scent machine,"
probably the STU-100, invented by William Tolhurst and Larry Harris, two
well-known dog handlers and experts on the use of bloodhounds in police
manners. Mr. Tolhurst, who lives in upstate New York, told AIM that it
is "very possible" that his STU-100 was used and his website does list
the FBI's Washington Field Office as one of his customers. Tolhurst and
Harris have sold their $600 STU-100s to local police forces, particularly
in California where Mr. Harris is based. Mr. Tolhurst believes that scent,
derived from oils transferred from a person's skin to a particular article
like envelopes, would linger after decontamination. He acknowledged that
his device was somewhat controversial, but compared skepticism about its
effectiveness to that surrounding earlier tools like the polygraph. He
declined to offer any further details citing the "on-going investigation."

AIM has learned that the STU-100
was the "new technology" and that Mr. Harris and his dogs were flown in
by the Bureau for the Hatfill search. AIM also learned that both the STU-100
and Mr. Harris are very controversial in the world of police bloodhound
handlers. Officer Jerry Nichols, the LEBA President, told AIM that both
LEBA and the National Police Bloodhound Association have declined to endorse
the STU-100. Officer Nichols was very critical of the methodology used
by the FBI and Harris in the Hatfill case, saying it was "badly flawed."
Too many people handled the letters, it's not certain that the scent would
survive the decontamination process, and a judge threw out a case involving
Mr. Harris that was very similar to this. In fact, police handlers were
so offended by Mr. Harris' technique in that case, one flew to California
from Maryland to testify for the defense.

At first glance, this looks like
just another FBI fiasco. But when did Newsweek magazine become an arm of
the Justice Department? It doesn't appear to have challenged the shaggy
dog story it was fed by the FBI and repeated it verbatim. Neither mind
that Dr. Hatfill's career and personal reputation were at stake, Newsweek
got a sensational scoop.

Notra Trulock is
the Associate Editor of the AIM Report, at Accuracy in Media.

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Anthrax
can be treated successfully with antibiotics other than the three mainline
drugs that were in short supply during the anthrax scare last year, a Turkish
researcher said Friday at a microbiology meeting.

"There is a need for other therapies,"said
physician Duygu Esel of Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey, about 150
miles east of the capital, Ankara, "and these drugs may be the answer."

The three mainline drugs are ciprofloxacin
(sold as Cipro), doxycylcine (marketed as Vibramycin) and penicillin, Esel
said. All are effective against anthrax and probably will remain the first
choice for doctors, she said, especially to treat naturally occurring cases
of the disease in agricultural areas.

However, if the disease is used
as a weapon, penicillin is less effective and "may result in failure or
recurrence" of the disease, Esel told United Press International. All three
drugs likely would be in short supply during an anthrax attack, she said.

Two quinolone antibiotics -- the
same general type as ciprofloxacin -- work just as well against anthrax,
however, Esel said. The two -- gatifloxacin (Tequin) and levofloxacin (Levaquin)
-- penetrate lung tissue better than either doxycycline or penicillin,
she said.

It also is possible some strains
of anthrax may be naturally resistant to penicillin, Esel noted, something
that might not be expected with the synthetic quinolones.

The drugs were tested against
40 cultures of anthrax cells taken from human beings with various forms
of the disease. Both inhibited the disease as well as ciprofloxacin, Esel
said, and were slightly better than penicillin. Doxycycline was not included
in the study.

The finding is an "important observation,"
said physician David Hooper, an infectious diseases specialist at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, because it adds new weapons to the doctor's
armory.

"There was an issue last fall
of availability (of the mainline drugs)," he told UPI. Although officials
have made strenuous efforts to increase stockpiles, Hooper said many hospitals
still may not have supplies of ciprofloxacin because they prefer one of
the other quinolones.

"It's good to have this information
about the alternatives," Hooper said, adding the Turkish study was conducted
using isolated anthrax cells and a confirming study, testing the drugs
in animals, still is needed before doctors can switch to gatifloxacin or
levofloxacin.

Esel and her colleagues are indeed
planning to study the drugs in animals, she said.

A spate of anthrax-contaminated
letters in the U.S. late last year caused 18 confirmed cases of the illness
and five deaths. In 1979, an accidental release of anthrax in the former
Soviet Union resulted in at least 79 cases of anthrax infection and 68
deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta, the numbers of illnesses and deaths could reach into the millions
if an aircraft released anthrax over an urban area.

VIRGINIA BEACH -- The salesman
is kind and friendly, even consoling like a funeral director.

``Everything we do, unfortunately,
is disaster-oriented,'' he whispered.

D.E. ``Ed'' Thompson Jr.'s sales
table is first on the right, inside the Grand Ballroom at the DoubleTree
Hotel.

The sales director for LCM Corp.,
an environmental cleanup company with offices in Hampton and Roanoke, hawks
the stuff emergency workers need in a disaster. He has competed this week
with dozens of vendors at the 19th annual Virginia Hazardous Materials
Conference.

Spread out on tables is the latest
in chemical warfare defense equipment, breathing tanks, ``leading edge''
body bags, fingerprint scanners and American flag hard hats. One vendor
displays a decontamination tent. Another offers a $2,995 Civil Defense
Simultest Kit, which is designed to detect mustard gas, cyanide, chlorine
and other dangerous agents.

Glossy brochures describe other
merchandise: an inspection machine to detect and clean anthrax-contaminated
mail, for $3,900; Dr. Shrink Zipper Access Doors, plastic entryways with
zippered openings, for $17.50 a box; The Commander Brigade Ensemble HazMat
suit, which looks more like something worn for a moon walk, for $2,300.

While some companies shy away
from selling to the public, others encourage private citizens to take the
pricey precautions. One brochure offers a $195 children's ventilation hood
in neon yellow for ages 9 and up. It also offers a $99 escape hood that
``can be carried in any briefcase or purse.''

Last year's Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks dramatically broadened the market to equip those who respond to
disasters and those who must clean up afterward.

In the past year, the federal
government has supplied $4.2 billion to first responders, such as police
and fire departments. The war on terror is expected to cost $100 billion
through year's end.

The HazMat road show targets all
emergency workers as it travels the country. In the Beach version, which
runs through noon today, more than 50 workshops have focused on reconstructing
the Sept. 11 emergency response and lessons learned in the anthrax contaminations.
Others have dealt with smaller disasters, such as challenges posed by chemical
tanker-truck crashes and the hazards of dismantling a clandestine drug
lab.

But the vendors take center stage.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Drager Safety
Inc. has sold 50 of the $2,995 chemical-detection machines to Washington,
12 to Baltimore and 12 to the D.C. airports.

``It's sad to say, but business
has been good,'' Drager salesman Jeff Fleming said.

W.E.L. Inc., an environmental
cleanup company with offices in Roanoke and Concord, has been one of the
busiest tables, with bowls of candy, key chains, pens, magnets, mouse pads,
and plastic bags to haul the freebies.

At the next booth, Richard L.
Morgenroth offers a raffle for a television. The sales director for HMHTTC
Response Inc. said his company answers emergency calls for highway disasters,
chemical spills and attacks by weapons of mass destruction. It has 14 offices
nationwide and soon will open a 15th, in Richmond.

``We work on people's worst fears,''
Morgenroth said.

A brochure explains that this
year's second round of trade shows is under way and that the company also
will participate in a six-city ``whistle-stop tour'' sponsored by Norfolk
Southern Corp.

It seems the companies that sell
equipment are booming, while others, such as Thompson's LCM Corp., are
hurting because of the sagging economy and a lack of incidents to respond
to.

After 9/11, Thompson and a partner
spent five weeks in New York with his company's nine decontamination trailers,
where 200 emergency workers passed through each hour.

The trailers initially were stationed
at ground zero. They were moved to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island,
where debris was hauled for sifting and disposal. The trailers house powerful
showers that wash away blood, disease and chemicals, or forced-air spigots
that blow away asbestos and dust.

Thompson shivers when he recalls
the 12-hour shifts he worked in New York.

What was the worst? Again, in
a whisper, he said, ``The decomposing bodies. There was disease flying
everywhere.''

His company wasn't paid for the
work,
Thompson said. And two contracts to clean up waste sites were canceled
for lack of funds.

``It's been hard,'' he said, turning
to offer a smile and a handshake to a visitor.

Reach Tim McGlone
at 446-2343 or tmcglone@pilotonline.com

ST. LOUIS
POST DISPATCH

St.
Louis native labeled "person of interest" in anthrax case fights to clear
his name

BY KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO

Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau09/29/2002 09:15 PM

WASHINGTON — At Mattoon (Ill.)
Central Junior High in the late 1960s, kids called Steven Hatfill "Dr.
Science" for his intense love of the subject, his James Bond-inspired plans
to build a laser and his ever-present slide rule tucked into a leather
case.

A nerd, perhaps. Withdrawn, he
was not.

"He was on the nerdy side but
extremely outgoing," said Terry Vandeventer, a Mississippi herpetologist
who attended junior high and high school science classes with Hatfill in
the southeastern Illinois town.

"He was popular because he was
funny. He got into a little trouble in class because he was a wisecracker.
And he was kind of brave. He'd say things to teachers that you or I couldn't
have gotten away with."

Today, the nation wonders if that
smart-alecky boy became the man who got away with last year's deadly anthrax
attacks — or a fall guy whose life has been shredded by a government that
has failed to solve the murders.

Hatfill is the only person named
in connection with the investigation, which began after the first victim
died in Florida, one year ago this week. Attorney General John Ashcroft
has called him a "person of interest." The FBI searched his apartment three
times this summer.

A St. Louis native and a former
Army bioscientist, Hatfill has an expertise in biowarfare that put him
among scores of microbiologists who attracted investigators' attention.
But several coincidences set him apart:

He worked near the Army's central
repository for the strain of anthrax found in the deadly letters.

In 1999, he commissioned an anthrax
study that described an anthrax-by-mail attack.

His "secret" security clearance
was suspended after he failed a CIA polygraph test in August of last year,
just before the anthrax attacks.

He lived at one time near a neighborhood
called Greendale, which was used in a phony return address on some of the
anthrax letters.

But coincidences don't make for
evidence, and Hatfill has been charged with no crimes, nor even named as
a suspect. He has proclaimed his innocence and said the public speculation
has been devastating.

"Reputation is in
tatters"

"My life has been completely and
utterly destroyed by the attorney general, John Ashcroft, and the FBI,"
Hatfill, 48, said in a statement early this month after Louisiana State
University fired him from a $150,000 job as co-director of the school's
National Center for Biomedical Research and Training.

"I'm now unemployed. Twenty years
worth of training is down the tubes. My professional reputation is in tatters."

In a news conference Aug. 25,
Hatfill said, "This assassination of my character appears to be part of
a government-run effort to show the American people that it is proceeding
vigorously and successfully with the anthrax investigation."

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said
there was no such motive in the searches of Hatfill's Maryland apartment.
The leaks that led to live news media coverage of the searches, he said,
were completely inappropriate — whatever the source.

"The bottom line is — our job
is — solve this case, and when facts come to our attention, we investigate
them," said Bresson, who declined to characterize Hatfill's status in the
investigation.

He noted that Ashcroft did so
"responding to questions once (Hatfill's) name was already out there."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was so concerned about Ashcroft's statements
that he wrote him last week, asking him to explain. He also asked the attorney
general to explain why a Justice Department e-mail ordered Louisiana State
to remove Hatfill from any Justice Department-funded programs, including
the one he had been hired to run.

People in Mattoon were shocked
by Hatfill's sudden appearances on the national news, and some share Grassley's
concerns.

"I think everyone around town,
whether they liked Steven or not, feels this was highly unjustified and
that is not what the FBI should do," said Timothy Tutt, an electrical engineer
in Mattoon. Before you kill a man's career, you'd better make sure you
got a smoking gun."

Hatfill declined to be interviewed
for this story, according to his friend and spokesman, Pat Clawson, a former
St. Louis television reporter.

From Mattoon to
Africa

Born in St. Louis, Hatfill and
his family moved to Mattoon, in Coles County in central Illinois, where
his father became president of the town's electric-meter factory.

Hatfill was an impressive student,
even in junior high school.

"Nobody ever had any thoughts
in their minds other than the fact he was going to be highly successful
— he was going to get doctorates in science and mathematics," said Vandeventer,
one of the junior high schoolmates impressed by Hatfill's detailed diagrams
for a laser.

Hatfill graduated from Mattoon
High School in 1971 and attended Southwestern College, a small Methodist
school in Kansas, where he studied biology.

In items he later submitted to
his hometown newspaper and to his college alumni magazine, Hatfill detailed
his further education:

He took a leave for a year to
work with a Methodist doctor in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, returning there
in the late 1970s to earn a medical degree from the Godfrey Huggins School
of Medicine. He cited three separate master's degrees in microbial genetics,
medical biochemistry and experimental pathology, as well as a doctorate
in molecular cellular biology, most earned in Africa.

Hatfill said he served with the
U.S. Army's Institute for Military Assistance in the former Rhodesia, as
well as with the white-ruled government's Special Air Service and Selous
Scouts that unsuccessfully fought black rebels to stay in power.

Hatfill's early years in Rhodesia
coincided with a 1979 outbreak of anthrax that affected roughly 10,000
people. It was long rumored to have been an attack launched during the
civil war by white-run government forces. Nevertheless, many renowned anthrax
experts have discounted that theory, attributing it to naturally occuring
skin anthrax spread by contact with infected cattle.

During several years in Harare,
Zimbabwe, he lived near a neighborhood called Greendale, the same name
attached to a nonexistent New Jersey school used as a phony return address
on anthrax letters sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

Hatfill left Africa in the mid-1990s.

Working for government

He has repeatedly said he has
never worked with anthrax. But his expertise in biodefense and his work
at Fort Detrick, Md., have helped spur investigative interest in him.

He took a research fellowship
at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. From 1997 to 1999,
he worked at the Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases
at Fort Detrick.

With a research fellowship, Hatfill
worked with deadly viruses such as Ebola, but not the anthrax bacteria.

Institute spokesman Chuck Dasey
said Hatfill worked in the base's labs, which include a repository for
the same strain of anthrax found in the deadly letters sent last fall.

"He didn't work on anthrax, because
he was not a bacteriologist. He worked as a virologist," Dasey said. "He
could have worked in close proximity to people working on anthrax. He did
not have access to that (anthrax repository)."

In January 1999, Hatfill went
to work for Scientific Applications International Corp., a defense contractor
with an office in McLean, Va., that works with the government in developing
defenses against biological weapons. He was there through early March of
this year.

Ben Haddad, a spokesman for the
company, declined to discuss Hatfill's dismissal. But he confirmed that
soon after Hatfill started at the company, Hatfill and a colleague commissioned
another scientist to write a study on potential anthrax attacks and decontamination
procedures to counteract them. At the time, Hatfill still had access to
Fort Detrick's labs under a research fellowship.

The study focused mainly on widespread
release of anthrax through means such as crop dusters, Haddad said, but
opened with "a scenario . . . about a person in an office who opens an
envelope and powder falls out."

"That's not proof"

In August of last year, Hatfill
sought a higher security clearance from the government but failed a CIA
polygraph examination, reportedly because of answers he gave about his
background. The result: His secret-level clearance was suspended.

Clawson said Hatfill appealed
the results of that polygraph. "As far as I know, it's still pending."
On Oct. 5, the first anthrax victim died. The FBI took over the investigation
a few days later, and it wasn't long before Hatfill became the subject
of speculation.

He said he was laid off from Scientific
Applications International after a reporter phoned the company in February
asking questions about Hatfill and anthrax.

On July 1, he got the job teaching
at Louisiana State University, but he was placed on leave a month later
after the second publicized FBI search of his Maryland apartment. He was
fired Sept. 2.

The FBI searched the apartment
for a third time on Sept. 11, after Hatfill had moved out.

Bloodhounds who had sniffed swabs
of the anthrax envelopes about 10 months after they were mailed reportedly
gave an alert in Hatfill's Maryland apartment during one of the searches,
another of the bits of investigative material that have yet to add up to
solid evidence.

"I have grave doubts as to whether
there will ever be an arrest in this case," said a scientist who has closely
followed the case and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whoever did
it was very careful not to leave definitive clues — not to lick stamps
or not to leave fingerprints or forensic evidence. Short of that, there
is a lot of circumstantial evidence. But that's not proof."

Back in his hometown of Mattoon,
there are some, like bookstore owner Chuck Hutton, who will never believe
his high school comrade could have been involved. He last saw Hatfill on
Aug. 10 of last year at their 30-year reunion at the Ramada Inn.

"He seemed fine. Like Steve. Outgoing.
Very friendly. Down to earth," Hutton said. "We didn't talk in-depth about
work. We talked about old times. For whatever reason, I believe he's innocent,
and I'd stand behind that 100 percent."

Tutt, Hatfill's junior high science
rival is less sure. But he's certain that the handling of the case, as
seen on the national news, has been wrong.

"The more I watched it, the more
I thought, 'Oh, geez. I really hope Steve is guilty because what the FBI
is doing to him is way out of line.' The more I see, the more I think,
if Steve's guilty, then they really should belly up to the bar."

WASHINGTON — As the hunt for the
bioterrorist who sent anthrax by mail enters its second year, investigators
who have logged tens of thousands of hours in their search say they are
no closer to solving the case.

FBI agents face the same mystery
that unfolded before a horrified nation last fall: There are five fatalities
in four states and four "weapons" — letters contaminated with anthrax that
seems to have come from the same strain. But there are no links to a culprit
and no motive.

"Do I think this case will be
solved? Yes, I do," says Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler. "I think
there will be something scientific or something behaviorally that will
break this case. But Ted Kaczynski took 18 years."

Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber,
killed three people and injured 23 with packages he sent through the mail.
He was caught after his brother turned him in.

In their crash course about the
science of the deadly bacteria, investigators have identified the strain.
They have located a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., where they say they believe
at least one of the letters was mailed. They have conducted 4,700 interviews.
But they lament that they have not reached what one investigator calls
"a turning point." They have been unable to link two of the victims — Kathy
Nguyen, 61, a New York hospital worker and Ottilie Lundgren, 94, a Connecticut
retiree — to any contaminated letters.

The investigation also has been
hampered by the recovery of only minuscule amounts of anthrax spores. Investigators
must balance the need to use the spores to develop forensic tests against
their fears that they are destroying too much of the evidence.

The culprit is also a killer of
few words. Unlike Kaczynski, who wrote letters to newspapers and a lengthy
manifesto that gave himself away, the four anthrax letters were written
in just 78 words.

Another letter that contaminated
a Florida tabloid photo editor, the first victim, has not been recovered.
So agents can only speculate about its intended recipient.

And investigators have not been
able to determine why the recipients of the other four letters — the New
York Post, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and
Patrick Leahy — were chosen. Knowing why Daschle and the publisher of six
supermarket tabloids were sent letters could tell investigators more about
the sender. Or perhaps not.

Roscoe Howard, the U.S. attorney
in Washington, whose office is coordinating the investigation, says a big
break may be needed to solve a case this complex.

The investigation began when the
photo editor, Bob Stevens, checked into a Florida hospital with flu-like
symptoms. He died two days later, on Oct. 5.

Anthrax-contaminated letters began
turning up in Manhattan, at NBC and the New York Post. Then, Daschle received
his letter; it contained an especially potent and deadly dose. By late
November, four other people were dead and 17 others were sick with anthrax
infections.

The general lack of knowledge
about anthrax hamstrung investigators at the beginning. For example, ignorance
was so widespread that a lab in New York that examined anthrax in one of
the letters was contaminated because of faulty procedures.

The investigation was slowed in
the early stages in other ways. Agents sorted their way through more than
17,000 hoaxes and false alarms.

The FBI and the scientific community
got off to a rocky start, further complicating one of the most complex
investigations in the agency's history. During the early days, FBI agents
who are used to dealing in absolutes had great difficulty understanding
scientists who are accustomed to hypotheticals. That gap frustrated both
sides, law enforcement officials say.

Distrust set in as the FBI realized
that the very people it was counting on to help solve scientific mysteries
— microbiologists and bioterror experts — were also potential suspects.

Van Harp, agent in charge of the
FBI's Washington office, wrote a letter in November to the American Society
for Microbiology telling the scientists just that.

Bioweapons scientists at Dugway
Proving Ground in Utah and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., volunteered to help educate the
agents about anthrax, and then submitted voluntarily to polygraph tests
to eliminate themselves as potential suspects. But some were asked to sit
for hours of polygraphs, sometimes multiple times.

The FBI profile of the anthrax
killer originally described an adult male with a science background who
worked in a laboratory where he had access to anthrax. Profiles often change
during an investigation, but the FBI refuses to discuss any revisions it
may have made. Still, agents say they believe they are looking for one
culprit.

There is a finite number of people
with the expertise to have produced the finely ground anthrax spores found
in the letters. Agents have reduced that number to about 30 to 40 scientists.

"We are learning things every
day — about spores, about what constitutes a crime scene, about who could
do these things," Howard says.

Over the summer, investigators
honed in on Steven Hatfill, 48, a former Army scientist who taught police
and paramedics how to respond to bioterrorism. He was among those who had
voluntarily submitted to polygraph testing.

In June and again in August, the
FBI searched his apartment in Fort Detrick. Word leaked to the news media,
and the search was conducted with news helicopters hovering. The episode
infuriated Hatfill, who has denied any involvement.

Attorney General John Ashcroft
stopped short of naming Hatfill a suspect. He describes Hatfill as a "person
of interest." It's a term that is unfamiliar to veteran FBI agents and
one that does not appear in the U.S. Attorneys Manual, the federal prosecutors'
handbook.

Law enforcement officials say
the focus on Hatfill has left the false impression that the investigation
is narrowing. But, the officials say, FBI agents are almost fearful of
ignoring any lead or crossing anyone off their list.

As a result of the attention,
Hatfill was fired from Louisiana State University.

For the FBI, the anthrax attacks
— more than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — have forced the agency to
re-examine the way it approaches murder investigations. The basics no longer
apply. Where exactly was the crime scene — the victims' homes, the postal
facilities that handled the anthrax letters, the tabloid headquarters in
Florida, the Capitol?

Since the attacks, investigators
have returned to all of the sites repeatedly.

"It's a complex crime, one that
just needs time and patience to solve," Howard says.

HATFILL
TURNS TO AN OLD PRO TO GETS HIS MESSAGE OUT ; RADIO EXECUTIVE HAS HISTORY
OF DEALING WITH FBI - AS AN INFORMER

"Dr. Hatfill has been living a
life of utter hell," Clawson said in a booming broadcast voice at the Aug.
11 introduction of Hatfill and his attorney at the first nationally televised
news conference. Now, along with his work as sales and marketing chief
at a national radio network, Clawson also fields media calls day and night
for his friend. The news conferences, too, were his idea.

"Steve was being made out to be
a monster in the press - like a wacko Unabomber," said Clawson, 47, who
met the scientist five years ago at a regular dinner gathering of professionals
in defense, intelligence, law enforcement and media. "So I quite forcefully
stated my position that Steve needed to get his story out before the press."

He doesn't mince words in defending
his friend.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he's
arrested. We've had that suspicion for some time, but not for anything
involving bioterrorism, because he didn't have anything to do with that,"
Clawson said. "When you've got the FBI and Ashcroft crawling up your rectum
like they are, they're likely to find something."

Speaking his mind has never been
an issue for Clawson. He moved to St. Louis in 1974 for a radio job and
eventually became an investigative reporter on television, with his last
job at KTVI in the late 1970s. He worked in Michigan and returned to St.
Louis to join a private investigative firm, Fitzgerald & Dorsey in
1980. It didn't last long.

The FBI raided the office in September
of that year, tipped off by Clawson that the Clayton agency had paid local
police to tap into a national crime database and provide the office with
confidential arrest records. It led to fines for the agency, as well as
for officers in the Clayton, Florissant and St. Louis police departments,
many of whom resigned.

It also led to Clawson's arrest
on charges that he had asked the agency for $5,000 in return for not providing
information to help prove the charges against it. A St. Louis County grand
jury refused to indict him on the charges, deemed by Clawson as payback
for "blowing the whistle on corrupt cops."

Now the man who once gave a hand
to the FBI has become its most public critic in the case of his friend
Hatfill.

Revelations that the U.S. government
shipped directly to Iraq samples of germs that could be made into biological
weapons raises some obvious questions: How could we have done such a thing?
And are we still doing it, if not to Iraq then elsewhere?

The answer to the second question
is no - but we were until recently. As for the first, scientists say that
what seems clear in hindsight wasn't even on the radar screen a few years
ago.

"It was not a good idea, but it
was standard operating procedure," Jonathan Tucker, a U.N. weapons inspector
in Iraq in 1995, said yesterday. For decades, American laboratories
routinely sent samples of anthrax and other potential germ-warfare agents
around the world. At least 72 shipments to Iraq in the 1980s, now the subject
of congressional hearings, were legal and routine at the time.

American Type Culture Collection
(ATCC), a nonprofit biological supply center based in Manassas, Va., sent
two samples of a particularly deadly anthrax strain to Iraqi labs in the
late 1980s. Both were approved by the Commerce Department.
In other cases, scientists saw no need to notify the government.
"The Commerce Department had restrictions, but most people totally ignored
them," said Gigi Kwik, a fellow at the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies
at Johns Hopkins University. "Most research that goes on - 99.99 percent
of it - was pretty legitimate."

Iraqi scientists requested anthrax
bacteria for research into the cattle-borne disease. It is endemic there,
causing major losses of livestock and occasional human deaths. Iraq also
requested the germs that cause gangrene, botulism, and West Nile virus
infection, all purportedly for research. "You see the dilemma," Tucker
said. "These materials are not only biological weapons; they also cause
natural diseases."

ATCC, the source of the anthrax
shipments, still stores and sends thousands of samples to medical researchers
around the world - although it now must get federal approval for the most
dangerous pathogens.

Iraq would not necessarily have
needed anthrax from America to create weapons. Because Iraq has its own
anthrax problem, Iraqi engineers could get the bacteria from the soil or
from sick cattle. "The United States government was a bit naive in
approving these sales, but at the time there wasn't much concern about
bioterrorism," said Tucker, who is now a fellow at the Washington-based
nonprofit Institute of Peace.

The anthrax shipments came to
light during a 1995 congressional hearing into the possible causes of gulf
war syndrome. Then-U.S. Sen. Donald Reigle reported that the United
States shipped to Iraq pathogens that might be used for germ warfare at
least 72 times. Records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta indicated that the agency sent samples of West Nile and other
mosquito-borne disease agents between 1985 and 1989. Iraqi scientists
made the request to help study the diseases, a CDC spokesman said.
No restrictions were imposed, despite evidence that Iraq had used chemical
weapons in its war against Iran earlier in the 1980s.

Concern about the use of germs
as weapons began to raise alarms in the United States in the 1990s. During
the gulf war, the United States bombed a suspected biological weapons factory
in 1991. After the war, weapons inspectors discovered extensive evidence
that Iraq had continued making biological weapons at an animal feed factory.
The Commerce Department began to more closely scrutinize all exports to
Iraq.

In 1993, a coalition of 33 countries
voluntarily began controlling the shipments of germs and equipment that
could be used to make them into weapons, although the common, informal
exchanges of biological agents among research colleagues remained routine.
Many were sent in the mail. More alarms went off in 1996, when an
American named Larry Wayne Harris ordered a sample of the bacteria that
cause bubonic plague through the mail. "There were no questions asked.
They shipped material to him," Tucker said, although Harris was later caught.
That incident spawned the 1997 federal law requiring the CDC to approve
all shipments of 36 deadly agents, including anthrax and plague.

The anthrax-stuffed letters that
were sent through the mail last year, killing five people, prompted more
restrictions. Now the CDC must oversee not only shipments of anthrax but
all labs that possess the germs for research purposes.

Alibek
Doubts FBI Claims on Hatfill

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.comThursday, Oct. 3, 2002

Dr. Ken Alibek, one the world's
leading authorities on biowarfare, has cast significant doubt on the claims
of the FBI that Dr. Steven Hatfill or another American may have been behind
last years mail anthrax attacks.

Alibek, former head of the Soviet
Union's bioweapons program and now executive director for George Mason
University's Center for Bio-Defense and a distinguished professor at GMU,
offered his candid comments about the Hatfill case on NewsMax's exclusive
"Off The Record" Club audioprogram.

Alibek, who has been consulted
by the FBI on the anthrax attacks, said that an analysis of available evidence
suggests that there is reason to believe that the source of the anthrax
attack was foreign, not domestic, as claimed by the FBI.

Though not precluding the possibility
the anthrax was from a domestic source, Alibek says on "Off the Record"
that he has serious questions about this theeory.

Alibek cites, among other issues:

The hijackers were looking for
crop dusters. He says it's hard to believe that they wanted to use crop
dusters for attacking the World Trade Center.

The first cases of anthrax were
in Florida, near where some of these hijackers lived. Also, there were
reports about a strange anthrax-type ulcer on the leg of one of the hijackers
before 9/11.

The timing of the attack in conjunction
with 9/11 was "sort of a simultaneous attempt" to cause a greater fear
and anxiety. "Sometimes, it seems to me, that somebody actually used
this atmosphere of panic, anxiety for sending anthrax in which it could
be a domestic case. There are many issues and questions that we still have
unanswered, but you notice I don't answer this question to say, 'OK, it
was a domestic war' or '... a foreign case.'"

In one of the letters the word
"penicillin" was misspelled. Hatfill, a medical doctor, would hardly have
not known how to spell the word. "It's hard for me to believe that
somebody with medical background would make such a big mistake, if it's
not done intentionally, of course."

The FBI failed to conduct an immediate
search of the places where the hijackers lived in Florida. Alibek said
that "when you do any investigation you shouldn't get rid of any possible
opportunity, any possible lead. If you took a week just to reach your conclusion,
saying OK, domestic case or foreign case, you can lose some very important
evidence. And specifically, if, for example, you narrow down your investigation,
at the earliest stage of investigation and then you follow this path, for
example, and just, in about six, eight or nine months or a year, you find
out it was the wrong case, of course, it's too late to go back to seek
for some other cause ... because in many cases, people have short memories."

Alibek said he didn't buy the
claims of FBI profilers who think the anthrax attacks were orchestrated
by a patriotic American who wanted to warn Americans about the danger of
bioweapons. He said those who concocted the anthrax mail attacks were simply
cold-blooded killers.

Noting that the FBI early on devoted
most of its energies and resources to tracking a domestic perpetrator,
Alibek said: "For example, if you investigate something immediately after
it happened, people still have something in mind, what they saw, what they
knew, and so on and so forth.

"In my opinion, in each case when
you do an investigation, of course, you need to keep in mind all possible
situations until you have ... very strong opinion or very strong proof
that some of the leads are appropriate, I would say. In this case, you
shouldn't have done domestic investigation at early stage of this investigation."

In "Off the Record," Dr. Alibek
makes more, startling revelations about a possible smallpox attack, and
the source of the West Nile virus.

Curiouser
And CuriouserBy Notra Trulock, III October 3, 2002

AIM’s recent column, A Shaggy
Dog Story, challenged a Newsweek story that revealed the use of bloodhounds
in the investigation of Dr. Steven Hatfill as a "person of interest"in
last fall’s unsolved anthrax killings. The FBI told AIM that the column
was incorrect, but refused to say how or why. So what did we get wrong?

AIM has confirmed that the FBI
did use a vacuum machine to collect scent from an envelope containing an
anthrax-tainted letter. The scent was supposedly vacuumed onto a gauze
pad and then used to cue the bloodhounds at Hatfill’s apartment and two
other locations. AIM reported that Larry Harris, a co-inventor of the vacuum,
and his dogs were flown in the from the West Coast for the search. Harris
denied this, saying, "That was not Larry Harris." When asked if his dogs
were used, Harris clammed up saying that he "was not at liberty to discuss
the details of the case." He referred AIM to the FBI in Washington, but
spokesmen there cited the "on-going investigation" to decline comment.

AIM stands corrected. The bloodhounds
were most likely flown in from three local police or sheriff’s departments
in Southern California. Harris is based in Orange County, but AIM has not
been able to learn if the dogs were raised or trained by him. The FBI recently
told a Baton Rouge reporter that these were the only "scent discrimination"
dogs in the country used by the Bureau. In mid-September, the FBI flew
three dogs to Louisiana to assist local authorities in the hunt for a serial
killer. Naturally, the FBI gave a press conference and demonstrated a "specialized
mini-vacuum cleaner device that sucks the scent from the object onto gauze
pads," according to Melissa Moore, a reporter at Baton Rouge’s The Advocate.
Moore told AIM that the killer is still at large. Her impression: this
was a last ditch effort to demonstrate to the public that law enforcement
was desperately trying to find the killer. Sort of like the anthrax case.

And there are still unanswered
questions about the scent supposedly collected from the envelope. A 1999
article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin defined scent as "the bacterial,
cellular, and vaporous debris enshrouding the individual." This combination
is believed to be unique to an individual, which the article says accounts
for the "singularity of human scent." The FBI says that scent is to be
collected by investigators or evidence technicians from "anything a suspect
has touched, worn, or eliminated, but articles of clothing worn close to
the skin work best." AIM learned that scent may also be collected from
car seats, spent bullet casings, and it may be transferred to sterile gauze
pads for storage and later use. This may be done either by the vacuum device
or by direct contact between the scent article and the gauze. The gauze
pads may be preserved over time in an evidence freezer and be used months
later. Experts say that the earlier the scent is collected the better,
but the FBI claims that usable scent has been collected from evidence three
years old.

Neither the National Police Bloodhound
Association nor the Law Enforcement Bloodhound Association has endorsed
the vacuum device used to collect the scent in this case. Officials from
these organizations say the vacuum itself may contaminate the scent and
cite studies showing that temperatures of 650 degrees F are required to
completely erase scent from the materials used in the "scent chamber."
They say that they have witnessed users swabbing out the scent chamber
with alcohol, which for them raises basic contamination issues. The Bureau
knows about these disputes, but attributes them to personalities and factionalism
within the community of police dog handlers.

However, the Associated Press
has reported that forensics examination of the anthrax letters turned up
no fingerprints and no saliva residue. The use of envelopes with pre-affixed
stamps indicates that the perpetrator took great care to leave no traces.
A police detective said that the perp likely donned protective gear to
prevent direct contact and infection. So how then could scent have been
transferred onto the letters or envelopes? One FBI source, who acknowledged
a lack of expertise in these matters, insisted that it was possible to
collect scent from the envelopes.

A Maryland state policeman with
long bloodhound experience thought that it was theoretically possible that
some minimal amount of scent might have survived decontamination of the
envelopes. And that scent might have transferred if the perp "leaned over
the envelope." But this source says that’s "a lot of variables," and expressed
deep skepticism about the FBI’s claims.

Notra Trulock III,
is the Associate Editor of the AIM Report, at Accuracy in Media.

1
year later, yet no anthrax culprit found

By Tim CollieSun-Sentinel

October 5, 2002

In the year since a wave of anthrax
attacks began with the death of a tabloid journalist in Boca Raton, the
federal government has pushed pioneering research, developed anti-terrorism
measures and bolstered emergency response to biological and chemical assaults.

Everything but come up with the
culprit.

On the first anniversary of the
mailings that spread the deadly biological agent, the investigation apparently
still hasn’t found the source of the anthrax, where it was prepared, how
it was handled and most importantly, who sent it.

The answers to these questions
could be explosive, the stakes being far higher than the identity of one
killer. If the anthrax was posted into letters by a foreign power, as some
leading scientists suspect, the attacks would be considered an act of war
on par with the Sept. 11th terrorist missions.

But if the perpetrator is an “insider”—a
member of the secretive community of U.S. bio-warfare researchers who developed
anthrax and other deadly pathogens—then decades of U.S. military research
could be discredited.

‘Insider’ Theory

Investigators are leaning toward
the latter theory. So far, only one potential suspect—a former U.S. weapons
researcher dubbed a “person of interest” by U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft—has been named.

The FBI declined comment, but
those among the nation’s small number of bio-terrorism experts consulted
early on by the government fear investigators are stymied. Some feel that
by publicly focusing on one individual, Steven Hatfill, the FBI is creating
another Richard Jewell or Wen Ho Lee—two men whose lives were trashed after
being investigated in flawed terror and espionage probes.

“The investigation seems to have
ground to a halt,” said Martin Hugh-Jones, an epidemiologist at Louisiana
State University who is one of the world’s leading experts on anthrax.
“I felt at one point that it was perhaps a domestic expert, but now I don’t
know.

“The FBI seems to have put all
of their money on this Hatfill, but at the end of the day you have to have
the proof, and it appears that they don’t,” Hugh-Jones said.

Others who are in contact with
the scientists being consulted by investigators think the probe is closer
to the mark than publicly revealed. Still, even they are worried that the
most basic questions have yet to be answered: the how and why of one of
the worst bio-terror incidents in U.S. history.

Isolating the strain

That isn’t to say that investigators
don’t know a lot. Over the last year they have isolated the strain of anthrax,
known as Ames, used in the attacks. They have determined that it was likely
produced in the last two years, and that it apparently improved in quality
with each letter sent. The anthrax that was sent last year to U.S. Sens.
Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy contained highly refined, easily inhaled
powder that was some of the best “weaponized” version of the bacteria researchers
had ever seen.

But fundamental questions remain.
The method of delivery to the AMI building in Boca Raton has never been
determined, and why was it attacked first? The other targets were much
better known media organizations and politicians in major East Coast cities.
Boca seems like the odd man out.

Moreover, how was the product
so expertly refined and handled if the culprit was an American-based loner?
Some of the nation’s best minds disagree over whether the anthrax could
have been cooked at home or in a lab.

“I’ve never agreed with the course
the investigation is apparently taking,” said Richard Spertzel, a former
head of the U.N. Special Commission Biological Weapons Inspections force
and former deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.. “This stuff, from what I’m
being told, is too good to have been developed in someone’s garage. I also
don’t buy that it was snuck out of a U.S. military lab.

“You need very good equipment,
very top-notch facilities to make something up like this, and the only
ones with those facilities are a foreign country,” said Spertzel. “Iraq
definitely has the capability. Iran maybe. Russia. Those are the countries
you’d look at.”

But Hugh-Jones and Ken Alibek,
who headed the secret civilian arm of the Soviet Union’s offensive biological
weapons program, both think that it’s possible a savvy individual could
have developed and mailed it in primitive conditions.

“You could go out early in the
morning, with a few plastic bags, and pour it into the letters in the open
air,” said Hugh-Jones. “As long as you did it with the wind blowing left
to right, say, across you, then you’d be pretty safe. What you don’t want
is to have it blowing to your back—that creates turbulence and you’d inhale
it.

“But after you have it in the
sealed envelopes, I don’t see where there’d be any evidence on you,” said
Hugh-Jones. “You’d just wash up and toss the clothes into a landfill, where
they’d disappear with tons of other garbage.”

Other questions revolve around
the strain itself. While Ames was the preferred strain at U.S. weapons
facilities, it likely has been shared and distributed to labs in friendly
countries like Britain, Canada and Israel, according to scientists.

AMI revisited

The investigators themselves seemed
to underscore these questions when they returned last month to the scene
of the first attack. Over several days they scoured the AMI building again
for letters and leads to the quality of that anthrax and the method of
delivery.

“The biggest question is where
was this done, because whoever did it had to have access to some kind of
lab, and the facilities needed to pull it off,” said Milton Leitenberg,
a former international arms monitor and a bioterrorism expert at the University
of Maryland. “And I think it’s clear that so far, they haven’t figured
that out or they don’t have the evidence to prove it.

“What I can say is this: there
are closed forums on the Internet in which this is discussed by experts
all the time, and there’s more that is known than has publicly been revealed,”
Leitenberg said. “Early on, there were five researchers who went to the
FBI and shared what they knew, their suspicions about who did this.”

Those tips, along with other evidence
gathered, led investigators early on to develop a profile of a lone domestic
terrorist, an individual who likely had a background in the relatively
small community of scientists who work with anthrax and other agents.

List of 50 scientists

The bureau has developed what
investigators describe as a working list of about 50 scientists who fit
this profile, perhaps because of troubled job histories or other problems.
To winnow down the list, agents have interviewed hundreds of scientists,
polygraphed quite a few, and served nearly 2,000 subpoenas on labs, universities,
private businesses and homes. In addition, they sponsored research into
cutting-edge science that has been used to track down the type and source
of the anthrax.

Hatfill, a germ warfare specialist
who worked at the U.S. Army’s bio-warfare labs in Fort Detrick, Md., from
1997-99, is the only person on the list who has been identified publicly.
A specialist in exotic viruses who claims he never handled anthrax at the
labs, Hatfill made the list in part because he lost his security clearance
after a questionable polygraph test and discrepancies found on his resume.

Hatfill has maintained his innocence.
He and his supporters have said he’s the victim of a witchhunt by those
who disagree with his conservative politics. Conservatives in this debate,
represented by military researchers like Hatfill, suspect that a foreign
government launched the anthrax attack. It’s a position that supports their
philosophical reluctance to sign international treaties limiting U.S. bioweapons
research.

Liberal opponents of bioweapons
research, who suspect that the anthrax terrorist is a U.S. military scientist,
think that the motive behind the attack was to boost weapons research by
creating a phony foreign threat in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Since the attacks, the U.S. government
has approved more than $6 billion in new spending on defense, much of it
geared toward bio-chem resources. That has alarmed the liberal wing of
the scientific community.

“The number of research laboratories
and personnel handling dangerous pathogens is about to mushroom, making
oversight and adequate safety and security control much more difficult
to impose…,” wrote Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a researcher with the Federation
of American Scientists who has been the chief proponent of the insider
theory. The FBI has questioned her about her suspicions that an American
scientist was behind the attacks.

“This is most definitely dividing
the scientific community, and it’s right down ideological lines,” said
Leitenberg. “The people who back Hatfill are the people who worked with
him, who mentored him. They stand to lose a lot if it’s someone from the
inside who did this. At the same time, those who are on the other side
are the ones who believe in international treaties, who think the Bush
administration should sign them.”

Part
1: Questions Linger a Year After Anthrax Mailings

Unknown
dominates probe

By Laurie GarrettStaff Writer

October 7, 2002

First of Two Parts -- It came
into the building in a letter. Somewhere along the way, Ernesto Blanco,
an American Media company mail room clerk, handled it. The letter was opened
near a stack of reams of paper for the 68,000-square-foot building's copy
machines. Eventually, photo editor Robert Stevens held the envelope, unwittingly
sprinkling its contents onto his computer keyboard. It spread all over
the
three-story Boca Raton, Fla., office building as those reams of paper were
inserted into copy machines that shuffled the pages about. Or so the Federal
Bureau of Investigation would conclude a year later.

It was there, but nobody could
have imagined its presence at the time. And nobody would, until Stevens
was taking his final breaths and Blanco was lying in an intensive care
unit, fighting for his life. Anthrax.

On Oct. 4, 2001, the world learned
that Stevens was dying of acute inhalational anthrax disease, and with
his death the following day a chain of events unfolded that would permanently
imprint the word "bioterrorism" into the consciousness of Americans. It
would shake up the country's public health system as nothing ever had.
And it would test the resolves of thousands of health workers, the largest
group of whom would be scouring the nation's capital and New York City
in search of clues and answers.

A year later, those dogged disease
detectives have scaled many obstacles, but still face a long list of unsolved
mysteries. How two of the five anthrax victims -- including Bronx resident
Kathy Nguyen -- contracted the disease remains unknown. The FBI still is
searching for the culprit or group responsible for the deadly mailings.

And officials at the federal and
local levels still are struggling to reshape America's public health system,
trying to mend the enormous holes in the nation's safety net that were
revealed last fall. What became clear in the past year is the extent to
which the public health system was overwhelmed by just seven known anthrax-laced
envelopes.

On Oct. 2, 2001, Stevens, 63,
was admitted to a West Palm Beach, Fla., hospital. He was in a terrible
state. The American Media photo editor had been on a fishing vacation with
his wife, traveling about the South, when he came down with what he thought
was the flu, in North Carolina.

That was five days earlier, during
which time his condition had worsened considerably. By Oct. 2, Stevens
was nauseated and making little sense. He had no idea where he was, what
year it was, or who was the president of the United States. Blood tests
revealed a war was under way, with millions of white blood cells doing
battle with some unknown invader.

While the nearby Jacksonville,
Fla., public health laboratory tried to identify that mysterious invader
in Stevens' blood, the hospital put him on massive doses of antibiotics.
But the anthrax bacteria had long since made their way into Stevens' spinal
cord and brain, triggering meningitis. As he lay in intensive care, the
bacteria released three powerful toxins into his blood. It would be months
before scientists, spurred by the urgency of the anthrax crisis, would
study how these toxins kill.

One way, they learned, was by
disabling Stevens' immune system, allowing the other two to wreak havoc
inside cells all over Stevens' body.

Months later, scientists and clinicians
would realize that giving antibiotics to patients as far gone as Stevens
only worsens matters, as the drugs kill some anthrax bacteria, which break
open, releasing their deadly toxins. The sudden toxic surge flooded Stevens'
brain, causing a grand mal epileptic seizure. Were it not for a machine
that pumped oxygen into his airways, Stevens would have died immediately.

By Oct. 3, the toxins began killing
cells in Stevens' heart. He suffered a heart attack and then went into
a coma. He never regained consciousness.

Months earlier, the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta had begun a poorly funded
effort to upgrade the nation's public health laboratories in hopes of improving
local capacity to diagnose rare infections, such as anthrax. A tiny cadre
within the CDC, the Army and a handful of other institutions had long feared
the potential use of biological weapons and was appalled to learn that
most American health labs couldn't run reliable tests for a long list of
likely germ weapons.

The gold standard for such lab
work was set by CDC lab chiefs Richard Meyer and Tanja Popovic, who had
trained several dozen local laboratory staffers before the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. Yet nationwide, fewer than 100 health laboratories -- out of thousands
-- had completed laboratory response network training and equipment upgrades,
Meyer said.

Fortunately, one such trainee
was Phillip Lee of Jacksonville, the man who grew anthrax from Robert Stevens'
blood samples. Lee used the special stains and fluids Popovic had
taught him would reveal the presence of anthrax in a fluid sample.

Peering through a microscope at
a thousand-fold magnification, he saw Stevens' cerebrospinal fluid swarming
with long thin rods, stained a deep purple, and lined up end to end to
form chains -- classic attributes of anthrax bacilli. When he called Popovic
on Oct. 3 to tell her what he found, the CDC scientist knew the result
was solid -- America had anthrax on its hands.

The world's top DNA-PCR (DNA fingerprinting)
lab and anthrax diagnostics facility is a two-tiered facility at the CDC.
Meyer ran the first tier -- a section that conducted the primary screenings
of samples, processing them both for anthrax DNA and as legally certified
criminal evidence.

In a higher-security building,
Popovic directed the lab that confirmed infection by growing living anthrax
bacilli from a sample. Fortunately, Popovic's lab was housed in a brand-new
building, completed just weeks before Sept. 11. A few months before, the
dangerous work would have been performed in a World War II-era facility
in which contamination could not have been easily prevented. By the time
she received the fateful call from Jacksonville, Popovic and her tiny staff
were working in a state-of-the-art facility, housed under security so strict
that its innermost core could be entered only by a handful of people.

Meyer's DNA analysis could give
a tentative answer within an hour or two, but Popovic's confirmation couldn't
come any faster than the rate at which anthrax grows -- at least seven
hours.

Back in Florida on Oct. 3, Lee's
anthrax diagnosis was more a matter of puzzlement than anything else. Nobody
then could anticipate the national chain of events that would unfold shortly.
Lee didn't know that another patient -- mail clerk Blanco -- also was suffering
from anthrax, or that the Florida cases were part of a bioterrorism event
that had already led to skin infections in New York newsrooms -- infections
that wouldn't be properly diagnosed for several more days.

On Thursday night, Oct. 4, the
CDC's chief of meningitis and special pathogens, Dr. Brad Perkins, had
just nestled in for his daughter's piano recital when his cell phone rang.
The CDC caller told Perkins that a Florida man was hospitalized with inhalational
anthrax. Fourteen hours later, Perkins was in Florida leading a CDC investigation
to determine how Stevens got infected with a remarkably rare microbe. His
first stop was the hospital where Stevens remained unconscious and was
running a fever of 104 degrees.

"He was intubated, critically
ill, unable to speak," Perkins recalled. "But I did not expect him to die
that day. And actually the family was very hopeful that he was going to
survive."

In Washington, Health and Human
Services Secretary Tommy Thompson officially had announced the ailing Stevens'
anthrax case to a nation whose nerves were still very much on edge from
the Sept. 11 attacks. He said of Stevens' infection that it "appears that
this is just an isolated case" and "there's no evidence of terrorism."

Proceeding on a scientific mission,
Perkins took his team to the American Media building, where Stevens had
worked for The Sun supermarket tabloid. As they met with editors who knew
Stevens, the phone rang. It was the hospital, informing American Media
that the photo editor had just died of anthrax poisoning.

"That was a fairly dramatic moment
because we were sitting in a room with people who had known him," Perkins
said. "This was a universally loved guy. Everyone was just in utter disbelief."

Stevens' Oct. 5 death brought
grim urgency to a CDC investigation that spanned four states through which
he had recently traveled. And it brought the world's media, numerous state
and federal agencies and the White House into the picture.

Thompson once again faced the
media, saying the anthrax case was probably of natural origin, based on
something Stevens picked up from drinking from a South Carolina stream.
Anthrax is not a water-borne organism, however, and the secretary's comment
would haunt his department, undermining its credibility for months.

Thompson, a former governor with
no scientific or medical training, issued orders that all information to
the public and media come from his office, barring government scientists
and health experts from providing expert advice or information.

In Florida, meanwhile, Perkins'
job was to stay focused on leading a solid, scientific investigation.

He and his small staff meticulously
scoured Stevens' home and office, as well as the American Media mail room,
swabbing for anthrax spores.

In Atlanta, the CDC was eager
to have autopsy results on Stevens, but nobody in Florida wanted to perform
the procedure. Pathologist Sherif Zaki, the CDC's top medical examiner,
flew to West Palm Beach on Saturday, Oct. 6, and headed straight for the
morgue. He found the staff of the medical examiner's office understandably
frightened, Zaki said, but willing to assist once he had explained safety
procedures.

When they opened Stevens' chest,
Zaki recalled, the team found "evidence of anthrax in literally every organ
we touched," especially the man's disease-fighting lymph nodes. Those were
so saturated with the toxins that they actually disintegrated as Zaki's
probes touched them.

The next day, Perkins got word
from the CDC's anthrax laboratory that swabs collected from Stevens' computer
keyboard and the mail room tested positive for Bacillus anthracis. That
finding triggered the FBI's criminal investigation. He also got CDC laboratory
confirmation that there was a second case of the disease -- in someone
who worked in the same building as Stevens -- and learned about Ernesto
Blanco, fighting for his life in another hospital.

At that point, Perkins said, he
decided to place thousands of American Media employees and recent visitors
on ciprofloxacin antibiotics as a precaution. In coming days television
footage of long lines of anxious Floridians queued up to get nasal swabs
and pills would spark public anxiety and a demand for antibiotics. Within
two weeks the nation's entire supply of ciprofloxacin would be sold out,
with none available for treatment of genuine, and often serious, ailments
for which it is normally used, such as children's ear infections.

In Atlanta, the CDC was deluged
with calls asking who should be given antibiotics. In what doses? What
are the symptoms of anthrax? Is the powder in my Alaska office a hoax or
the real thing? The agency was in danger of being overwhelmed. And because
of the directives from Thompson, most of the queries had to go unanswered.

"We needed information," John
Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Board of Health, said recently.
"Every kind of government report that we needed was delayed. We were getting
information from journalists, for God's sake, not the CDC. There simply
wasn't a good, accurate, timely internal communication system."

"We made a decision at CDC that
the people who needed information in order to effectively respond should
be our priority," Dr. Julie Gerberding recalled. Last fall she was the
deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases. Ten
months later, her boss, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, would be forced to resign and
Gerberding would be named CDC director. Few could get information from
the CDC for days, Gerberding would later concede, not even America's physicians,
most municipal health directors or even members of Congress.

With the exception of New York
City, where then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani personally handled all public announcements
related to terrorism, the nation's public health messengers were late in
communicating. Public health officials learned that their communications
systems -- computers, phones, faxes, video systems -- were woefully out
of date. Their ranks of skilled speakers and information officers were
thin, and their ability to control panic minimal.

A year later, the CDC has built
the Health Alert Network, reaching every public health department, no matter
how small or remote, in America. But that was a mere skeleton last October.
"As events wore on, it became clear the CDC needed to be the primary source
of scientific information," Gerberding said in an interview months later.
"But once it was obvious to all that we needed to take the lead, we were
in a reactive mode. And we are still catching up."

Within hours of the collapse of
the World Trade Center, Dr. Kevin Yeskey, director of the CDC's Bioterrorism
Response Program, had issued an alert to health departments nationwide
"calling for enhanced surveillance, meaning, 'Please be vigilant for anything
that might be suggestive of a bioterrorism event,'" Yeskey said. As word
of the Florida case spread, health providers and public health officials
all over America started remembering that alert, and anxiously sought information
from Atlanta.

"I said, 'Let's set up an Ops
Center here,'" Yeskey recalled. He sat down with a sheet of paper and drew
a pyramid, with CDC director Koplan at the top and Infectious Diseases
Director Dr. James Hughes and Gerberding just below. He drew a military-style
chain-of-command map that connected Koplan to the field investigators then
dispersed over the states tracing Stevens' movements and suspected additional
anthrax cases.

Yeskey, a former military officer,
marched into Gerberding's office, his chart in hand, and said, "We need
a Special Ops Center. This is what it would look like. Field A responds
to command leader A here in Atlanta, and Field B ... "

Gerberding stared at the piece
of paper and thought it was a crazy idea. Slightly amused, she listened
as Yeskey spun a web of desks and phones and chains of command. But under
prior bioterrorism preparedness guidelines, she knew some sort of operational
center was necessary, so she gave Yeskey the green light to implement what,
in the back of her mind, remained a whacky concept.

Within 24 hours, Yeskey's team
had transformed the CDC's auditorium into a command center, with portable
walls erected according to the chart he had mapped out. In each space were
CDC officers, drawn from their normal duties to handle emergency coordination.
One desk was Florida. One desk soon would be New York City. As events unfolded,
Washington, D.C., and other hot spots around the country got desks, staffed
24 hours a day by high-ranking CDC scientists whose job was to coordinate
all the information and logistics in a given field location.

At another desk was a medical
team that did nothing but answer questions from physicians. If doctors
called in with suspected anthrax cases, that team had a list of questions
and symptoms to walk the person through, aimed at winnowing out cases that
obviously were not anthrax.

By mid-October, the Ops Center
was a noisy beehive, coordinating activities all over the world -- indeed,
a global liaison desk was added. Never in the history of the CDC had such
a system been used. Of course, Hughes said, "Never in the history of the
CDC have we dealt on so many fronts at the same time," even during serious
epidemics.

A year later, the CDC is building
a multimillion-dollar Special Ops center in Atlanta, and encouraging local
health departments all across America to erect mini-versions of such communications
and command centers. Looking back on October 2001, health officials shake
their heads in wonder that Yeskey's primitive pyramid had somehow gotten
them through the chaos of the anthrax crisis.

TUESDAY, in Discovery: A New York
Diagnosis

The
Anthrax Crisis

How a suspected
case in NYC threaded its way to diagnosis despite initial CDC uncertainty

By Laurie GarrettSTAFF WRITER

October 8, 2002

Second of two parts

A year ago, the nation's public
health "surge capacity" was put to the test.

The culprit, anthrax, wound up
infecting only 12 people, killing five of them. Yet, it utterly sapped
the capacities of public health operations not only in targeted areas,
such as New York City, but throughout the nation.

Last October the deadly white
powder was seemingly everywhere.

"It was a national problem," Dr.
James Hughes, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
National Center for Infectious Diseases, said in an interview in his Atlanta
office. "All the state public health laboratories were overwhelmed with
specimens, hoaxes. It was even true internationally."

Such emergencies call for rapid
conversion of hospitals, fire departments, public health offices and, perhaps
most vitally, diagnostic laboratories into crisis facilities that can process
high volumes of material for a sustained amount of time.

"Surge capacity - imagine!" said
Hughes. "If it was exhausted for us here at CDC - literally and figuratively
- you can imagine what this means at the local level."

In New York as the anthrax crisis
heightened, "there were immediate problems," said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the
New York City deputy health commissioner. "There was an expectation of
instant analysis. Doctors wanted answers now. The volume of material far
exceeded our capacity. The NYPD was bringing stuff in at all hours, day
and night."

The lab was prepared to handle
"swab samples," he said, but wound up facing deliveries of easy chairs,
briefcases and newspapers - all suspected of being tainted with anthrax.
The health department's three bioterrorism-trained lab workers were toiling
around the clock, processing hoaxes - a routine that would continue for
four weeks.

New York's anthrax vigil had begun
in early October, when the first cases were diagnosed in Florida. Even
as fears and hoaxes were sending health department labs all over the country
close to maximum capacity, the effect was more pronounced here because
Dr. Marcelle Layton, head of the city health department's communicable
disease section, had faxed a 13-page anthrax advisory to 65,000 physicians
in the city, urging them to report suspected cases.

But Layton had a new concern:
She was worried about the case of Erin O'Connor, assistant to NBC news
anchor Tom Brokaw. O'Connor recalled that on Sept. 25 she opened an envelope
addressed to Brokaw and noticed it contained a white powder. A few days
later she developed an ugly, yet painless sore on her left collarbone.

Though a series of doctors and
O'Connor herself felt certain she was the victim of an anthrax attack,
neither the New York City Department of Health lab nor the U.S. Army's
lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland was able to find any anthrax spores in
the envelope or in O'Connor's skin biopsy.

Layton knew that if O'Connor had
anthrax, evidence would be hard to find. That's because a tissue biopsy
of the sore wasn't taken until several days after she had been placed on
antibiotics by another physician. And effective antibiotic use makes it
almost impossible to find intact Bacillus anthracis in the tissue of an
otherwise healthy individual.

So Layton called Dr. Steven Ostroff,
a Hughes deputy who had been the CDC's point man in 1999 during the West
Nile virus outbreak. He was in Washington to address Congress about protecting
the nation's food supply, and Layton reached him at the Willard hotel.
She knew that the only facility in the world capable of finding anthrax
in O'Connor's biopsy - if, indeed, it was there - was the CDC lab known
as RRAT.

The Rapid Response and Advance
Technology lab in Atlanta, where pathologists are affectionately referred
to as "The RRATS," was the brainchild of Sherif Zaki, the CDC's top medical
examiner. Over the years he had developed innovative techniques to find
obscure organisms in human tissue. And last fall he hastily developed a
new approach to identify anthrax: Using mice, he created antibodies to
attack three specific proteins found on Bacillus anthracis, and chemically
labeled the antibodies with dyes. If anthrax were in a sample of tissue,
Zaki would see bright magenta, rod-shaped bacilli under his microscope.

Ostroff recalled that Layton "asked
me if I could arrange to have specimens tested that were from an NBC employee.
She called me directly, because she had already called the CDC lab and
they had said, 'We're already overwhelmed with specimens from Florida.'
She wanted a top priority test, no delays."

Ostroff agreed to the testing
and the samples were sent overnight via Federal Express from Manhattan
to Atlanta.

On the afternoon of Oct.11 - even
as the three lab workers in New York were processing hundreds of pieces
of paper and desk objects found in O'Connor's work area at NBC, and the
envelope that she had opened was delivered to Richard Meyer, a CDC lab
chief - the O'Connor biopsy sample reached Zaki's lab. His staff set about
exposing it to the dyed antibodies, a process that would take several hours.

Submitting it to microscopic analysis
would be a tedious process. The sample - initially in a wax block, roughly
one inch square - had been sliced into hundreds of paper-thin pieces, each
one separately mounted on a glass slide. And every one had to be viewed
by Zaki and fellow pathologists Wun-Ju Shieh and Jeannette Guarner. The
trio pored over a microscope that allows up to five people to scrutinize
a slide at once.

As they began their night's work,
they saw healthy blue-stained human cells against a white background. Here
and there they spotted isolated fragments of magenta-colored material,
but these were not identifiable as anthrax.

At 1 a.m. they reached some slides
that bore significant numbers of magenta pieces. That could indicate antibiotic-
destroyed anthrax bacteria. Or it might be something else altogether.

Frustrated and exhausted, they
were reaching the bottom of their pile of slides when Zaki spotted a single,
isolated, fully intact magenta rod standing out against a sea of blue cells.
On the same slide, far away, was another.

He was sure it was anthrax. Shieh
and Guarner concurred. But they were mystified at finding only two identifiable
organisms in the entire sample. They were well aware the Fort Detrick group
had examined tissue from the same biopsy, using a different technique,
and found nothing.

"But I was sure," Zaki would say
later.

Hughes, the CDC infectious disease
center director, called Layton at 5 a.m. to report: "It looks like anthrax."
An hour later Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was on the phone, demanding to know:
Is it anthrax or isn't it?

"We think it is," Hughes said.
Giuliani said he didn't like the uncertainty, but he decided to go ahead
and make the CDC's pronouncement public.

On that morning, Oct. 12, the
NYPD showed up at the city health department lab with a second envelope
addressed to Tom Brokaw that O'Connor had received within a week before
the first envelope. It had been in one of O'Connor's file drawers.

"They took it to our lab," Weisfuse
said, "and the handling of it caused a contamination event at our lab"
later that day. Anthrax powder puffed out of the envelope in clouds, spreading
across the lab. Two of the three lab workers inhaled it. Unlike their counterparts
at the CDC, they had never been offered anthrax vaccines. They immediately
began taking the antibiotic ciprofloxicin.

Their noses were swabbed for signs
of anthrax, and results of the tests they conducted on their own samples
came up positive. No one would develop symptoms. For their bravery,
the lab workers would receive awards from the American Society for Microbiology
11 months later.

But on that October day Weisfuse
had
a problem. Two of his lab technicians were too traumatized to work, and
there were hundreds more samples to test. Worse, the lab was contaminated
and had to be sealed shut. (It remains shuttered, despite several gas treatments.
So far, nobody has determined how to clean the lab sufficiently to guarantee
that no deadly spores remain.)

Late that day, Layton called the
CDC to report that this second envelope to Brokaw tested positive for anthrax,
confirming O'Connor's exposure. Zaki, relieved to have his diagnosis confirmed,
fell into his first restful sleep in days.

But for New York City's lab workers,
a nightmare had just begun. The bioterrorism-trained trio "was very, very,
very upset," Weisfuse said. And specimens kept pouring in to the city health
department. "We needed a good Biohazard Level 3 facility" - where scientists
wear protective gear and shower and scrub before entering or leaving -
"fast."

New York City, where all emergency
response agencies had gone through bioterrorism drills for three years,
had another urgent problem. The carefully coordinated working relationship
between the Department of Health and the fire and police departments' hazardous
materials teams were in tatters, because members of the highly trained
teams had perished in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

"So the police didn't know how
to handle samples," Weisfuse said. Entirely new lines of communication
and understanding between the health department and NYPD had to be created
even as both were in crisis mode.

"Communication is the key," Layton
said. "And the issue that always comes up is: Who is in charge? There was
no question who was in charge in New York City - it was the mayor."

Because Giuliani took command
of all direct communication with the citizens of New York, Layton and her
colleagues focused on improving lines of information within the health
department and to local physicians and hospitals. They had several distinct
advantages, Layton said, from their experience handling West Nile virus.

Amid public anxiety in the summer
of 1999, the department learned the importance of a daily flow of honest
information, separately tailored for the general public and for physicians.
They learned to resist the temptation to issue constant reassurances that
everything was under control.

"The press would say to the health
commissioner and the mayor, 'Can you assure us?' and they said, 'No, I
can't reassure you. I can just give you the information accurately,'" Layton
recalled.

Every night until well after Thanksgiving,
Layton, exhausted, worked into the wee hours writing clinical and epidemiologic
summaries of the day's findings on samples and human cases. These bulletins
were faxed every morning to hundreds of hospital emergency rooms, infectious-diseases
departments and physicians throughout New York City and the suburbs. It
was Layton's conviction that physicians would be the first to spot new
anthrax cases and were the most credible voices of calm for the worried
public.

This simple exercise, copying
the effort used successfully for West Nile virus in 1999, cemented lines
of communication between the medical community and the Department of Health.
"That's the thing I'm most proud of, those broadcast alerts. Physicians
were screaming for them," Layton recalled.

Today, having caught their breath,
CDC lab chiefs Meyer and Tanja Popovic have tallied the anthrax laboratory
toll. All 50 states wound up inundated with suspicious samples by Thanksgiving,
Meyer said. In addition, laboratories in 66 nations requested assistance
or advice in processing possible anthrax samples. More than 80,000 specimens
were analyzed nationwide, 45,000 of them in Florida, New York, Connecticut
and New Jersey.

By December, when the federal
Department of Health and Human Services declared the anthrax episode over,
12 people had contracted the disease, and five had died of inhalational
anthrax. Two cases - those of elderly rural Connecticut resident Ottilie
Lundgren and Bronx resident Kathy Nguyen, a hospital clerical worker -
remain a mystery. Though it was assumed they were exposed to contaminated
mail, no culprit envelopes or papers were ever found in their homes.

The credibility of HHS and its
scientists suffered from their inability to explain basic aspects of anthrax.
For two weeks early in the anthrax scare, they insisted a fatal case of
anthrax required inhalation of some 10,000 spores. But the Lundgren and
Nguyen cases forced reconsideration, and by the end of the fall many government
experts were saying it was possible, at least theoretically, that inhalation
of fewer than 10 spores could be lethal. With that, every aspect of cleanup
of contaminated sites became excruciatingly complex, as workers and politicians
demanded assurance that not a single spore would remain alive in exposed
buildings.

One year and billions of dollars
later, the nation has upgraded its public health system, labs, computers,
scientific research establishment and training of hospital personnel. Surely,
the nation has learned many lessons, insiders say.

But is America ready for another
mass mailing of anthrax, or a worse contagious-disease attack?

"We have certainly taken some
giant steps forward," the CDC director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, said in a
recent news conference. But, she added, "we are not satisfied, we
are not finished, we have got more expansion and more work to do."

1) ‘Communication is the key.
And the issue that always comes up is: Who is in charge? There was no question
who was in charge in New York City - it was the mayor.’ - Dr. Marcelle
Layton, head of the New York City health department’s communicable disease
section

2) ‘There was an expectation of
instant analysis. Doctors wanted answers now. The volume of material far
exceeded our capacity. The NYPD was bringing stuff in at all hours, day
and night.’ - Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, New York City deputy health commissioner

For full coverage
of the anthrax probe, as well as answers to commonly asked questions about
the disease, visit www.newsday.com/health

Editor's note: This report, the
second of a two-part series, explores the government's probe into the post-9/11
anthrax attacks, pointing out seemingly ignored evidence suggesting a foreign
connection.
Yesterday's installment looked at a mysterious anthrax outbreak in 1957
that coincided with government vaccine testing.

Despite growing evidence that
the post-9/11 anthrax attacks were the work of foreign entities and perhaps
even persons closely tied to the Sept. 11 terrorists themselves, federal
investigators continue to pursue the theory that an American scientist
was behind the crimes – an approach not all critics are buying.

The cornerstone of this evidence,
according to many knowledgeable observers and scientists, is "the fact
that during the 1980s the United States government allowed biological pathogens
to be sold to the Iraqi government." Indeed, export records provided by
the American Type Culture Collection lists several pages of biological
substances sent to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education. Included on the
list for May 1986 is a shipment of "Bacillus Anthracis (ATCC 14185) V770-NP1-R.
Bovine Anthrax, Class III pathogen (3 each)." Listed in the information
line covering the shipment is also: "G.G. Wright (Fort Detrick) Batch #01-14-80
(3 each)."

"G.G. Wright" is Dr. George G.
Wright of the Army's Fort Detrick research facility, the physician who
in the 1950s was so instrumental in producing the vaccine for the Arms
Textile Mill tests.

Another crucial piece of evidence
cited by those who argue that investigators are not taking the possibility
of foreign terrorist-sponsored anthrax attacks seriously enough is the
meeting hijacker Mohamed Atta held with a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence
operative in Prague. The meeting took place months before the 9/11 attacks,
and, according to Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek, Atta met with Iraqi
intelligence official Ahmed Khalil Sar al-Ani on "at least one occasion,
perhaps more." Other sources have claimed that Atta and al-Ani met on "at
least four occasions." Just weeks after the alleged meetings, al-Ani was
expelled from the Czech Republic, on April 22, 2001. These reported meetings
are important because there is circumstantial evidence, according to foreign
intelligence sources, that al-Ani may have given Atta "a sealed flaskcontaining anthrax spores" at
one of their Prague encounters.

European newspapers reported several
times in October and November 2001 that "special FBI teams were dispatched
to Europe" to investigate the Prague reports. An unnamed "Western intelligence
official" told The London Times, "If it can be shown that Atta was given
a flask of anthrax, then the link will have been made with Osama bin Laden
and Iraq."

Two months ago, the German newspaper
Bild claimed that, according to Israeli security sources, Atta was given
anthrax by al-Ani, "which he took back to the U.S. on a flight to Newark,
N.J." In New Jersey, according to other intelligence sources affiliated
with Israel's Mossad, letters laced with anthrax were expertly prepared
and handed off to other underground terrorist cells that were charged with
mailing them to selected addresses.

According to "at least five experts"
interviewed by ABC News in October and November 2001, a substance called
bentonite was used to upgrade the anthrax found in the letter sent to Sen.
Tom Daschle's Washington, D.C., office. Bentonite is an unusual mineral
that after processing is used in many common products, including cat litter.
ABC's experts, as well as former U.N. inspectors that worked in Iraq, claimed
that bentonite "was a trademark of the Iraqi germ warfare program."

Following the ABC report, the
Wall Street Journal also claimed that bentonite was detected in the anthrax
mailings, but the White House was surprisingly quick and adamant to deny
that bentonite was discovered in any of the letters. Many observers were
surprised that anyone at the White House even spoke out on the subject.

White House press spokesman Ari
Fleischer made the unusual move of taking exception with the findings of
ABC's experts. Some experts fired back that Fleischer was wrong. Said one
expert, who declined to be quoted by name, "I said that traces of bentonite
were in the letter's anthrax. Nobody said that it was Halliburton produced
bentonite." The remark was an allusion to the fact that a large bentonite
manufacturer is a subsidiary of the company Halliburton, Vice President
Richard Cheney's former employer. After ABC News again reported its bentonite
claims, another unnamed "senior White House official" made a statement
backing away from Fleischer's earlier claim.

Another central piece of evidence
in the argument that foreign terrorists were behind the mailings is the
report that Dr. Christos Tsonas at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., treated Ahmed al-Haznawi, one of the 9/11 hijackers for a lesion
that he thought "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax."

The way the FBI handled the story
of Tsonas' encounter with al-Haznawi, which was related to the agency in
several interviews, appears perplexing, as does its handling of another
related incident examined below. A spokeswoman for Holy Cross Hospital
said in response to a request for information about the incident, "We cooperated
with the FBI and other authorities. At their request, we will not discuss
the matter. ... We have nothing to say."

According to law-enforcement sources
in Washington, D.C., a group of microbiologists and experts in weapons-grade
anthrax at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Civilian Biodefense also
interviewed Tsonas. At the time of the interview, many observers were skeptical
about the Center's motivations, because the university over the past 50
years has been the major recipient of millions of dollars in intelligence
community and defense department funding for projects, many still classified.
However, the group that interviewed Tsonas concluded that the doctor's
diagnosis made sound medical sense. They said that their conclusion "of
course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax
and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks."

The diagnosis of Tsonas is also
very intriguing when one considers that hijacker al-Haznawi lived near
the headquarters of American Media International in Boca Raton, Fla. AMI
photo editor Robert Stevens was the first fatality in the anthrax letter
attacks. According to informed sources, al-Haznawi "hated the kind of sensational
reporting" that AMI publications featured. Also worth considering
is that other 9/11 hijackers rented apartments in Florida from a real estate
agent who was married to an AMI corporate official.

If all this isn't enough, there
is the report of a pharmacist in Delray Beach, Fla., who was also interviewed
by the FDA and FBI. The pharmacist, Gregg Chatterton, told investigators
that two of the 9/11 hijackers came into his store, Huber Drugs, looking
for medication to treat irritations on Mohamed Atta's hands. Chatterton,
whose pharmacy is not far from AMI headquarters, recalled that Atta said,
"My hands – my hands burn; they are itching."

The FBI seems skeptical about
many
of the reports connected to Florida. In March, John Collingwood, an FBI
spokesman, said, "Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present
anywhere the hijackers had been."

Without question, and without
knowing what the FBI knows from its own investigation, the evidence that
the deadly mailings are somehow directly linked to foreign terrorists appears
far stronger than any other theory advanced thus far. Nearly one year past
the first anthrax death the case remains unsolved.

'He knows too much'

Other experts believe the anthrax
perpetrator is a former government researcher whose identity is being kept
secret.

In recent months, former Army
researchers have speculated that "the anthrax mailer may never be identified
or arrested" because "he knows too much" about surreptitious government
experiments conducted during the 1950s and later. Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
a professor of environmental science at the State University of New York
and the chairperson of the Working Group on Biological Weapons at the American
Federation of Scientists, has aggressively advanced the same hypothesis.
According to her "Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks" released on Feb. 5,
2002, and prominently posted on the Internet, "the FBI has known that the
perpetrator of the anthrax attacks is American" for over three months,
but, speculates Rosenberg, the perpetrator may be "untouchable to the FBI"
because he may "know something that he believes to besignificantly damaging to the
United States." In early February of this year, Rosenberg told Salon reporter
Laura Rozen, "This guy knows too much, and knows things the U.S. isn't
very anxious to publicize."

To date, Rosenberg has not said
what specifically the perpetrator may know that would be damaging, but
she has continued to widely imply that she does know the perpetrator's
name and that so does the FBI, CIA and the White House. In January, she
told National Public Radio, "I think they [the FBI] have known pretty much
who it is for at least two months. The problem may be either they're having
trouble getting specific, hard evidence to convict a specific person, or
there may be some reluctance to pursue this publicly because of the embarrassment
to the United States and because of the possibility that it might be difficult
to avoid having some classified material come out if he were prosecuted."

In a commentary, NPR reporter
David Kestenbaum said, "Rosenberg and other scientists have the strong
feeling they may have met or seen the person behind the attacks. Maybe
he attended their scientific meetings, stood in back of the room during
lectures."

According to several published
reports, Rosenberg, who has never identified publicly the person she thinks
is the anthrax killer, "reportedly named him as being Dr. Steven Hatfill"
in a private meeting with aides of Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy,
both targets of the post-9/11 mailings.

How details of that meeting were
obtained by the media is unknown. But, according to Baltimore Sun reporter
Scott Shane, in mid-June, two weeks before the first search of Hatfill's
apartment, "Barbara Hatch Rosenberg sent biodefense experts and reporters
an account of a 'likely suspect' who 'had access to a conveniently located
but remote location where activities could have been conducted without
risk of observation.'" That bit of information seemed to neatly fit with
the fact that Hatfill, in the past, had visited a "country house" in the
Virginia mountains. The house is reportedly owned by George R. Borsari
Jr., a lawyer. Borsari told Shane that Hatfill and Pat Clawson, a former
CNN reporter and broadcasting executive "who has known Hatfill socially
for six years" visited Borsari's country house for weekends of skeet shooting
and socializing with friends with Hatfill calling for directions at least
once.

On Aug. 11, Hatfill fired back
at Rosenberg when he charged in a public statement that, according to a
June 27 Frederick, Md., News-Post article, "a woman named Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg, who affiliates herself with the Federation of American Scientists,
saw fit to discuss me as a suspect in the anthrax case in a meeting with
FBI agents and Senate staffers."

Continued Hatfill: "I don't know
Dr. Rosenberg. I have never met her. I have never spoken or corresponded
with this woman. And to my knowledge, she is ignorant of my work
and background except in the very broadest terms. ... I am at a complete
loss to explain her reported hostility and accusations."

Rosenberg, who in January told
Sun reporter Shane that prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, "There have been
a number of occasions when we've said in frustration, 'What we need is
a biological weapons attack to wake the country up,'" reportedly is now
maintaining a very low profile regarding Hatfill and the anthrax attacks.
The Federation of American Scientists in recent days has gone out of its
way to put distance between itself and Rosenberg.

Henry C. Kelly, president of FAS,
said, "I would like to make clear that Rosenberg's remarks on this topic
do not represent the views of the Federation of American Scientists. FAS
opposes any effort to publicly identify possible suspects or 'persons of
interest' in the anthrax investigation outside of a formal law-enforcement
proceeding."

In a Sept. 16 article by David
Tell published in The Weekly Standard, Rosenberg is quoted as saying, "No
question, it was the FBI who outed [Hatfill]. I have never said or written
anything that pointed only to one specific person. If anyone sees parallels,
that's their opinion."

Rosenberg has been aided and abetted
in her campaign against Hatfill by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award winner for his reporting,
wrote five columns for the Times that appeared solely constructed out of
Rosenberg's speculations. Media watchdog groups maintain that Rosenberg
and Kristof, both said to be "left-wing activists," have problems with
"Hatfill's military background and his belief in a strong national defense
against bioterrorism." In an August interview on NPR, Kristof said he wrote
about Hatfill "to light a fire under the FBI" because he thought the bureau
was not doing a good job. Said Kristof, "It's a very awkward position –
this is a crucial public-policy issue and a fundamental matter of avoiding
terrorism in the future as well, and so we have to investigate."

Posted
on Thu, Oct. 10, 2002

One
year after, no anthrax culprit found

BY TIM COLLIESouth Florida Sun-Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - KRT NEWSFEATURES

(KRT) - In the year since a wave
of anthrax attacks began with the death of a tabloid journalist in Boca
Raton, the federal government has pushed pioneering research, developed
anti-terrorism measures and bolstered emergency response to biological
and chemical assaults.

Everything but come up with the
culprit.

It's been one year this month
since mailings spread the deadly biological agent, and the investigation
apparently still hasn't found the source of the anthrax, where it was prepared,
how it was handled and most importantly, who sent it.

The answers to these questions
could be explosive, the stakes being far higher than the identity of one
killer. If the anthrax was posted into letters by a foreign power, as some
leading scientists suspect, the attacks would be considered an act of war
on par with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist missions.

But if the perpetrator is an "insider"
- a member of the secretive community of U.S. bio-warfare researchers who
developed anthrax and other deadly pathogens - then decades of U.S. military
research could be discredited.

`Insider' Theory

Investigators are leaning toward
the latter theory. So far, only one potential suspect - a former U.S. weapons
researcher dubbed a "person of interest" by U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft - has been named.

The FBI declined comment, but
those among the nation's small number of bio-terrorism experts consulted
early on by the government fear investigators are stymied. Some feel that
by publicly focusing on one individual, Steven Hatfill, the FBI is creating
another Richard Jewell or Wen Ho Lee - two men whose lives were trashed
after being investigated in flawed terror and espionage probes.

"The investigation seems to have
ground to a halt," said Martin Hugh-Jones, an epidemiologist at Louisiana
State University who is one of the world's leading experts on anthrax.
"I felt at one point that it was perhaps a domestic expert, but now I don't
know.

"The FBI seems to have put all
of their money on this Hatfill, but at the end of the day you have to have
the proof, and it appears that they don't," Hugh-Jones said.

Others who are in contact with
the scientists being consulted by investigators think the probe is closer
to the mark than publicly revealed. Still, even they are worried that the
most basic questions have yet to be answered: the how and why of one of
the worst bio-terror incidents in U.S. history.

Isolating the strain

That isn't to say that investigators
don't know a lot. Over the last year they have isolated the strain of anthrax,
known as Ames, used in the attacks. They have determined that it was likely
produced in the last two years, and that it apparently improved in quality
with each letter sent. The anthrax that was sent last year to U.S. Sens.
Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy contained highly refined, easily inhaled
powder that was some of the best "weaponized" version of the bacteria researchers
had ever seen.

But fundamental questions remain.
The method of delivery to the AMI building in Boca Raton has never been
determined, and why was it attacked first? The other targets were much
better known media organizations and politicians in major East Coast cities.
Boca seems like the odd man out.

Moreover, how was the product
so expertly refined and handled if the culprit was an American-based loner?
Some of the nation's best minds disagree over whether the anthrax could
have been cooked at home or in a lab.

"I've never agreed with the course
the investigation is apparently taking," said Richard Spertzel, a former
head of the U.N. Special Commission Biological Weapons Inspections force
and former deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. "This stuff, from what I'm
being told, is too good to have been developed in someone's garage. I also
don't buy that it was snuck out of a U.S. military lab.

"You need very good equipment,
very top-notch facilities to make something up like this, and the only
ones with those facilities are a foreign country," said Spertzel. "Iraq
definitely has the capability. Iran maybe. Russia. Those are the countries
you'd look at."

But Hugh-Jones and Ken Alibek,
who headed the secret civilian arm of the Soviet Union's offensive biological
weapons program, both think that it's possible a savvy individual could
have developed and mailed it in primitive conditions.

"You could go out early in the
morning, with a few plastic bags, and pour it into the letters in the open
air," said Hugh-Jones. "As long as you did it with the wind blowing left
to right, say, across you, then you'd be pretty safe. What you don't want
is to have it blowing to your back - that creates turbulence and you'd
inhale it.

"But after you have it in the
sealed envelopes, I don't see where there'd be any evidence on you," said
Hugh-Jones. "You'd just wash up and toss the clothes into a landfill, where
they'd disappear with tons of other garbage."

Other questions revolve around
the strain itself. While Ames was the preferred strain at U.S. weapons
facilities, it likely has been shared and distributed to labs in friendly
countries like Britain, Canada and Israel, according to scientists.

AMI revisited

The investigators themselves seemed
to underscore these questions when they returned last month to the scene
of the first attack. Over several days they scoured the AMI building
again for letters and leads to the quality of that anthrax and the method
of delivery.

"The biggest question is where
was this done, because whoever did it had to have access to some kind of
lab, and the facilities needed to pull it off," said Milton Leitenberg,
a former international arms monitor and a bioterrorism expert at the University
of Maryland. "And I think it's clear that so far, they haven't figured
that out or they don't have the evidence to prove it.

"What I can say is this: there
are closed forums on the Internet in which this is discussed by experts
all the time, and there's more that is known than has publicly been revealed,"
Leitenberg said. "Early on, there were five researchers who went to the
FBI and shared what they knew, their suspicions about who did this."

Those tips, along with other evidence
gathered, led investigators early on to develop a profile of a lone domestic
terrorist, an individual who likely had a background in the relatively
small community of scientists who work with anthrax and other agents.

List of 50 scientists

The bureau has developed what
investigators describe as a working list of about 50 scientists who fit
this profile, perhaps because of troubled job histories or other problems.
To winnow down the list, agents have interviewed hundreds of scientists,
polygraphed quite a few, and served nearly 2,000 subpoenas on labs, universities,
private businesses and homes. In addition, they sponsored research into
cutting-edge science that has been used to track down the type and source
of the anthrax.

Hatfill, a germ warfare specialist
who worked at the U.S. Army's bio-warfare labs in Fort Detrick, Md., from
1997-99, is the only person on the list who has been identified publicly.
A specialist in exotic viruses who claims he never handled anthrax at the
labs, Hatfill made the list in part because he lost his security clearance
after a questionable polygraph test and discrepancies found on his resume.

Hatfill has maintained his innocence.
He and his supporters have said he's the victim of a witchhunt by those
who disagree with his conservative politics. Conservatives in this debate,
represented by military researchers like Hatfill, suspect that a foreign
government launched the anthrax attack. It's a position that supports their
philosophical reluctance to sign international treaties limiting U.S. bioweapons
research.

Liberal opponents of bioweapons
research, who suspect that the anthrax terrorist is a U.S. military scientist,
think that the motive behind the attack was to boost weapons research by
creating a phony foreign threat in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since the attacks, the U.S. government
has approved more than $6 billion in new spending on defense, much of it
geared toward bio-chem resources. That has alarmed the liberal wing of
the scientific community.

"The number of research laboratories
and personnel handling dangerous pathogens is about to mushroom, making
oversight and adequate safety and security control much more difficult
to impose…," wrote Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a researcher with the Federation
of American Scientists who has been the chief proponent of the insider
theory. The FBI has questioned her about her suspicions that an American
scientist was behind the attacks.

"This is most definitely dividing
the scientific community, and it's right down ideological lines," said
Leitenberg. "The people who back Hatfill are the people who worked with
him, who mentored him. They stand to lose a lot if it's someone from the
inside who did this. At the same time, those who are on the other side
are the ones who believe in international treaties, who think the Bush
administration should sign them."

In an attempt to justify the harassment
of Dr. Steven Hatfill, the Department of Justice may resort to tactics
used by Robert Kennedy against the Mafia, Hatfill's friend and spokesman
Pat Clawson told NewsMax.com.

"You've got the FBI and John Ashcroft
crawling up his backside looking for anything they can find," said Clawson,
a veteran investigator. "And it's not unheard of for the FBI or the DOJ,
once they've got you in their sights, to take the most minor blemish and
magnify it into a major federal charge just to preserve their reputations.

"What I can see happening, and
Dr. Hatfill's lawyers agree, is that Ashcroft has announced he's using
the Bobby Kennedy approach to going after terrorism. When Bobby Kennedy
was AG, he adopted the approach with the Mafia that he would use anything
he could find, any infraction anywhere of anything, no matter how minor
it was, to scoop 'em up and put them away. And Ashcroft has said he's doing
the same thing with terrorism."

Clawson recalled the case of a
Mafia boss Kennedy wanted to lock up but could find no evidence to arrest
for organized crime. He got his opportunity when a game warden caught the
mobster with two more turtle doves in his game bag than the law allowed
- an offense usually punished with a $50 fine.

Kennedy, Clawson recalled, managed
to get the man indicted and convicted for a violation of the Federal Migratory
Bird Act and jail him for three years. After that the man's nickname among
the mob was "Doves," Clawson said.

Ashcroft could use the same kind
of ruse to arrest Dr. Hatfill and justify the huge expense in money and
manpower spent investigating a man the DOJ could not connect with the anthrax
attacks.

Bad Litterbug

"He'll come out and announce,
'Today we've indicted Dr. Steven Hatfill for littering in a national park,'
or some other offense totally unrelated to the anthrax attack."

The FBI's harassment of Hatfill,
Clawson told NewsMax.com, is unrelenting.

"The FBI is still following him.
Surveillance comes and goes. Some days it's very intense; some days it's
not visible at all. But the FBI has been continuing their investigation
of him. And apparently coming up empty.

"On September 11 they raided his
former apartment. And not long ago they were following him very closely
on the Interstate - he was driving from D.C. up to Frederick [Md.], and
they were in front of him, behind him and on the side of him as he was
going up the freeway."

The effect of all of this on Hatfill
has been devastating.

"His life has been ruined by the
investigation. His reputation has been totally shredded. And one of the
things he's most upset about is that America's getting ready to go to war,
he's been trained, and he's being left on the sidelines," Clawson said.

Hatfill, he said, is jobless and
running out of money. "He told me: 'I'm out of work; how am I going to
pay these lawyers? I've run out of money. I can't keep paying my lawyers.'"

Feds Want to Destroy
Him

When Hatfill moved to Baton Rouge,
La., to start work at LSU he was promptly fired after DOJ told the university
it could not employ him on any projects that received money from the department.

The projects, Clawson explained,
were 97 percent funded by DOJ. And LSU, knowing it could not keep
him on the payroll, allowed Hatfill to incur the expense of moving to Baton
Rouge.

"They did it after he'd already
moved his stuff down - it cost him a lot of money to move all his stuff
down there and then move it all back here," Clawson recalled.

"They fired him without severance
pay. Just goodbye. Since then he's been sending out resumés, he's
been knocking on doors, and essentially he's been told he is radioactive
- and nobody want to touch him."

Time to Fight Back

Hatfill is planning to fight back.
Clawson confirmed that his friend was readying lawsuits against a number
of people and groups who have libeled and otherwise harassed him.

"He is planning to file several
defamation suits in the upcoming months against several individuals and
organizations, but he did not specify against whom the suits would be filed,"
Clawson said.

"The timing of the suits will
depend on what the DOJ decides to do - if they're going to arrest him for
something obviously that affects the timing of the suits, it could delay
it.

"The bottom line is he's unemployed,
he's looking for work, nobody will hire him, he's radioactive until the
Justice Department either charges or clears him. The Justice Department
is making no effort to move quickly to do either.

There Goes the New
York Times Again

"He doesn't have a clue as to
why the FBI is doing this. The best we can determine, this investigation
started as a direct result of the allegations that were being made by Barbara
Hatch Rosenberg and Nick Kristoff of the New York Times. Kristoff actually
acknowledged on an NPR show that he wrote those columns specifically to
trigger an FBI investigation of Steve.

"If the FBI had any evidence whatsoever
on Steve Hatfill, he would not be walking the streets as a free man today.
They're picking up these Arab immigrants on most nickel-and-dime charges
they can come up with. Do you really think they would allow the most important
mass murderer of the 21st century to be walking around free as a bird?"

'We Don't Have Anybody
Else'

The Weekly Standard's David Tell
reports that DOJ may be getting nervous about the pursuit of Dr. Hatfill.
He writes: "One 'law enforcement official' admits to the Los Angeles Times
that, 'to be honest, we don't have anybody that is real good [as a possible
anthrax suspect]. That is why so much energy has gone into Hatfill - because
we didn't have anybody else.'

"Other 'senior law enforcement
officials' express 'embarrassment' to the New York Times over the e-mail
directive to Louisiana State University" ordering Hatfill's firing, "acknowledging
that the Justice Department 'acted improperly' by demanding the firing
of a man who isn't even technically suspected of a crime. Yet another 'senior
Justice Department official' said that Ashcroft 'blundered' when he called
Hatfill a 'person of interest.'"

FORT DETRICK -- The Army and the
National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday they are in the process
of planning a biomedical research partnership that will greatly affect
the base.

In the near future scientists
from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
a component of the NIH, will work side by side on base, said Col. John
Ball, Fort Detrick Garrison Commander.

Over the next decade new USAMRIID
and NIAID biosafety laboratories will be built and connected on a 160-acre
plot of Detrick's campus, said Maj. Gen. Lester Martinez-Lopez, commanding
general for U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

The joined facilities will encourage
dialogue between scientists who have been working together for about 30
years, he said. They will create a place where the greatest minds in the
country can gather to develop pathogen and biological weapon defenses,
he said.

"Significant assets of both organizations
can come together ... to find some answers to our problems," said Dr. John
LaMontagne, deputy director of the NIAID.

Construction on the first building
could begin as early as 2004, officials said.

There is a sense of urgency to
the plans, said Gen. Martinez-Lopez.

"We are in the middle of a war,"
he said.

The initiative will allow both
institutions to "better respond to the needs of the country," he said.

The civilian sector is threatened
by a wider range of biological agents than even the military, said Col.
Erik Henchal, commander of USAMRIID. There is potential for diseases to
be weaponized, said Col. Ball.

"These problems can't be escaped
and we need to be positioned to address them," said Dr. LaMontagne.

Congress understands the need
for a partnership and has been very supportive, said Gen. Martinez-Lopez,
who was confident of future funding. Money is already set aside for
the NIAID building in the U.S. government's fiscal 2003 budget, officials
said.

The project is sure to cost billions,
but will save money by not duplicating what can be shared between organizations,
said Gen. Martinez-Lopez.

Not only will the biotechnology
developed by USAMRIID and NIAID at Detrick help scientists develop answers
for infectious diseases, it will also bring new industry to Frederick,
he said.

"This is an opportunity for the
community," he said. Local residents will reap the benefits of biotechnology
companies moving to the area, he predicted.

Once serious construction is under
way "you will not recognize the place," said Gen. Martinez-Lopez.

"Fort Detrick in a couple of years
will not look like Fort Detrick today," he said.

There will be enhanced security
on base, said Col. Ball. There will be some form of barrier around the
entire campus, he said. The main USAMRID building will probably be leveled,
he said.

Local officials have been very
supportive, said Gen. Martinez-Lopez.

"The community has always been
warm to us," he said.

Detrick will have a public hearing
on the partnership to listen to the concerns of the community, officials
said.

Bioweapons:
NEW LABS, MORE TERRORBy Eileen ChoffnesBulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Sep/Oct 2002

IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A YEAR SINCE
THE FIRST anthrax letter was mailed last September 18. Since then, FBI
agents and scientists have unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding
the strain of anthrax, and have created a profile of the likely perpetrator:
a lone man with a scientific background and access to laboratory equipment.

The anthrax he used, the Ames
strain, is highly virulent, resistant to many vaccines, and a perennial
favorite of military researchers--and bioterrorists. Its extraordinary
concentration --one trillion spores per gram--and purity are believed to
be characteristic of the kind manufactured using the optimal U.S. process.

Terrorists who want to mount a
major attack with bioweapons would need substantial help from state sponsors
to do so, according to many military and non-governmental biowarfare experts
and a recent report from the General Accounting Office (GAO). But what
if the assistance is unwitting, and the country is the United States?

The U.S. government's response
to the bioterror threat, coupled with lack of oversight in the civilian
biodefense sector, could endanger, instead of protect, the country. The
Bush administration wants to build more labs so that more scientists can
study the most dangerous pathogens. Such an expansion of the biodefense
infrastructure could create a training ground for would-be bioterrorists.

An inside job?

On June 22, senior government
officials said that scientists had determined the anthrax sent in the deadly
mailings last fall was "fresh," made no more than two years before it was
mailed (New York Times, June 23). The finding makes it less likely that
the anthrax was stolen from a lab, and more likely that the perpetrator
is connected to the biodefense establishment. Although the "Amerithrax"
investigation, as the FBI has dubbed it, has turned up no prime suspects,
investigators have a long list of "persons of interest," including 20-30
scientists and researchers. One of these men, Steven J. Hatfill, is a biodefense
researcher whose house has been searched more than once.

The germs isolated from the first
fatal case of pulmonary anthrax in Florida were indistinguishable from
those from Fort Detrick, Maryland, and Porton Down, Britain.(n1) This further
suggests that the anthrax attacks could have links to a sophisticated government
biodefense program.

After the mailings, the U.S.,
Canadian, British, French, Israeli, and German governments all pledged
to invest more money in civilian and military biodefense programs. In his
2003 budget proposal, President George W. Bush asked Congress to commit
almost $6 billion of the discretionary budget to biodefense activities.
In addition to buying and developing vaccines and drugs, much of the money
is likely to be targeted at building a national infrastructure for detecting
and treating infectious diseases.(n2)

These increased investments in
biodefense are troubling for two reasons. First, last July the United States
walked away from efforts to strengthen the compliance and verification
protocol of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). Citing doubts
about the ability to verify treaty compliance, the administration refused
to sign the protocol. The administration was also concerned about its potential
impact on U.S. defensive biowarfare research, and worried that pharmaceutical
industry trade secrets would be jeopardized by an intrusive inspection
regime.

Second, an increase in the biodefense
infrastructure, including the creation of new vaccines, could have the
unintended consequence of making the country less, not more, secure.

A fool's paradise

The bioweapons treaty bans the
development or production of agents and toxins, as well as the means to
deliver them "for hostile purposes or in armed conflict," yet permits research
for "prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes." But what constitutes
permissible defensive research under the treaty remains undefined. As a
consequence, there is a growing risk that defensive research--and the knowledge
base and infrastructure that support it--may have unintended effects.

Defensive research could act as
a smokescreen for offensive military programs. There is ample precedent
for this. Iraq, which signed but did not ratify the BWC in 1972, claimed
for years that it was engaged in purely defensive bioweapons research,
until a defector in 1995 disproved the "official" story. The Soviet Union
signed and ratified the treaty in 1972--and from that point on engaged
in a massive offensive bioweapons program, claiming it was defensive, until
Boris Yeltsin admitted the truth in 1992. And Japan's Unit 731, an offensive
biowarfare program of the 1930s and 1940s, was officially described as
an "epidemic prevention and water supply unit."

U.S. bioweapons policy has a long
history of ambiguity. When the United States renounced its offensive bioweapons
programs in 1969, President Nixon reserved the option to conduct offensive
research for defensive purposes. In a national security decision memorandum,
Henry Kissinger wrote: "The United States bacteriological/biological programs
will be confined to research and development for defensive purposes (immunization,
safety measures, etc.). This does not preclude research into those
offensive aspects of bacteriological/biological agents necessary to determine
what defensive measures are required."

This position was fully consistent
with several decades of U.S. policy. Sixty years ago, Secretary of
War Henry L. Stimson advised President Franklin Roosevelt on biowarfare:
"To be sure, knowledge of the offensive possibilities will necessarily
be developed because no proper defense can be prepared without a thorough
study of means of offense."(n3)

After World War II, the British
followed the same thinking. The British government wanted to focus on defense
against biological attacks, "but felt it was essential to proceed with
research into the offensive aspect of biological warfare, as until sufficient
research in this sphere had been carried out, the true problems of defensive
measures could not be wholly assessed."(n4)

In 1958, Gen. William Creasy,
commander of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, told a congressional committee,
"A defensive [chemical and biowarfare] program not supported by an offensive
program can well be worthless. You cannot know how to defend against something
unless you can visualize various methods which can be used against you,
so you can be living in a fool's paradise if you do not have a vigorous
munitions and dissemination type program."(n5)

The question of
intent

Problems with verifying the intent
of military medical and scientific research, and the difficulty of detecting
the development or use of bioweapons, have led to disputes between treaty
members. In 1981, the United States claimed that a strange anthrax outbreak
in Sverdlovsk in 1979 was caused by a Soviet violation of the BWC, but
Soviet officials attributed it to natural causes. The U.S. allegations
could not be proved. When the Soviet Union broke up, its secret offensive
biowarfare program, which had been operating since the time it signed the
BWC, was revealed. The Soviet explanation of the Sverdlovsk outbreak was
repudiated.

More than 30 years ago, Nobel
laureate Joshua Lederberg said that "molecular biology might be exploited
for military purposes and result in a biological weapons race whose aim
could well become the most efficient means of removing man from the planet."
These comments seem prophetic in light of revelations about the mousepox
experiments by R. J. Jackson in Australia, the Legionella multiple sclerosis
studies by Sergei Popov in the Soviet Union, and the fabrication of more
virulent or antibiotic-resistant strains of anthrax by the U.S. government.(n6)
In this era of "new genetics," the next generation of biowarfare agents
could be created--either intentionally or inadvertently--under the guise
of biodefense research.

In the late 1990s, the JASONs,
a group of academic defense advisers, concluded that "progress in biomedical
science inevitably has a dark side, and potentiates the development of
an entirely new class of weapons of mass destruction: genetically engineered
pathogens, including 'designer diseases' and 'stealth viruses.'" Should
such weapons be developed and deployed, the medical, public health, and
disease surveillance communities will always be in the position of responding
to last year's threat, instead of current or future disease threats.

National insecurity

The last time the world was on
the brink of a biological weapons race, Ronald Reagan was president, and
the "evil empire" representing the danger of bioweapons was the Soviet
Union. Shortly after Reagan took office, his administration stated that
"biological weapons presented a heightened threat to national security."(n7)
In response, between 1981 and 1987, Congress increased the budget of the
army's Biological Defense Research Program (BDRP) six-fold, from $15 million
to $90 million.(n8) By 1990, Congress began oversight investigations to
determine whether the investments in biosecurity were actually increasing
the safety and security of U.S.fighting forces. The GAO found
that more than half of these intramural and extramural research and development
projects supported by the BDRP bore little relationship to the intelligence
community's threat list, leading one commentator to observe that "because
a credible medical defense for biological warfare defies scientific logic
in the age of genetic engineering, the program offers a false sense of
security."(n9) Shortly thereafter, Congress restricted the BDRP's funding
to projects directed against threats identified as of the highest priority
for force protection against germ warfare.

Today, two decades after Reagan's
biodefense buildup, the situation is more dangerous than ever. The Bush
administration wants to expand the biodefense infrastructure to agencies
that are unprepared to handle that responsibility. As an example, take
the recent outcry over the creation of a synthetic polio virus. The Defense
Department-funded research was a stunt that contributed nothing to the
field of virology, a "gee-whiz" activity that would never have received
funding had the proposal been properly vetted through an agency equipped
to evaluate the scientific and technical merit of research projects. The
increase in such misdirected funding will weaken andendanger national biodefense
because truly important issues will be either neglected or underfunded.

Another source of danger is the
push to improve U.S. bioterror readiness by building more high-containment
research facilities. President Bush is proposing an enormous increase and
expansion in biodefense funding to combat a new evil--the "axis of evil."
In language that is eerily reminiscent of that heard 20 years ago, the
call for a "robust" biodefense system has again come to the forefront of
national security. But, unlike in the Reagan era, the response to the threat
is not limited to the armed forces and the intelligence community.

Now, the civilian research infrastructure
will play a much more important role--and the dangers of increasing the
number of trained people with access to the building blocks and knowledge
base of biowarfare could become all too apparent.

The dual-use dilemma

On March 14, the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) detailed their research priorities for countering bioterrorism.
Their broad goals include increased funding for treatment, diagnostics,
and vaccines, as well as projects in applied immunology and genomics. These
include studies on how pathogens affect humans as well as the genetics
of biowarfare agents.(n10) The NIH also plans to construct six to 10 new
biosafety level-3 and -4 facilities to supplement the seven level-4 facilities
that already exist or are nearing completion. In response, several other
countries have announced plans to build their own high-containment facilities.
This is a recipe for disaster.

At biosafety level-4 labs, the
most dangerous of all pathogens--for which there are no known treatments
or cures--are studied. These laboratories might become a pathogen-modification
training academy or biowarfare agent "superstore." The physical tools and
technology of bioterror are relatively cheap--it's the knowledge and experience
of working with pathogens that's priceless. Currently, there are no requirements
for rigorous background or security clearance checks for those who work
in such facilities. Oversight is focused on containment and limiting exposure
to the pathogens; making sure those who work with them are psychologically
fit to do so is not a priority.

Even more ominous are the military
proposals that recently came to light, indicating that both the air force
and navy are interested in the development of explicitly offensive anti-materiel
biological weapons. Such research would be a direct violation of the bioweapons
treaty.(n11)

The best defense may be fixing
a flawed public health care system. An example of how bad things are came
to light during a 1993 outbreak of Cryptosporidiosis in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
the largest epidemic of waterborne disease in U.S. history. The outbreak,
which affected more than 400,000 people, went undetected by the public
health community until a local reporter discovered an absence of over-the-counter
anti-diarrheal medications and toilet paper from the shelves of pharmacies
and grocery stores.

If access to health care were
guaranteed, the chance of detecting an epidemic early on would increase,
because people would be more likely to visit their doctors at the first
sign of illness. Several victims of the anthrax mailings last fall waited
to visit their doctors until they were in the end stages of the pulmonary
version of the disease, when it was already too late.

Biodefense research to combat
the threat of germ warfare is inherently dual use. To create a working
vaccine, one must first be familiar with the pathogen, and with this knowledge
comes the capability to create offensive weapons.

To create useful vaccines, scientists
must first know what agents are in an enemy's arsenal. If it contains unknown
genetically engineered pathogens, it would be fruitless to spend valuable
resources creating vaccines. It would be a guessing game. The military
could spend millions on a smallpox vaccine, only to find that the enemy
has weaponized plague, or a genetically modified strain of smallpox against
which the vaccine is worthless. Even excluding genetically altered strains,
there are so many pathogens available to potential bioterrorists that an
"agent specific" biodefense strategy, one based on vaccine development
and deployment, makes little pragmatic sense. Such an approach could
also create an unwarranted and dangerous illusion of safety.

On the international
level

The best defense against biological
attack is a combination of a robust medical surveillance system, universal
access to medical care, and domestic and international policies and practices
that discourage the development of bioweapons.

Some experts suggest that shortnotice,
on-site inspections of declared facilities might help to verify compliance
with the bioweapons treaty. But inspections can only go so far--a point
well recognized in the United Nations Special Commission's experience in
Iraq and in the early U.S. efforts to halt nuclear proliferation. The expertise,
infrastructure, and agents needed to produce bioweapons are inherently
dual use and can be easily disguised as biodefense activities.

If vaccines against biowarfare
agents are developed, the responsibility for this effort should be entrusted
to an international body specifically created for this purpose. This was
recommended more than 10 years ago in the Final Declaration of the Fourth
Review Conference of the BWC and has increased relevance today. State parties
to the bioweapons treaty should consider this proposal for their next meeting
in November, lest the world become mired in a biodefense arms race.

Eileen Choffnes
is a senior program manager for the Committee on International Security
and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The views contained
in this article are her own and do not reflect those of the NAS

Nearly three years ago, the federal
government gave Nancy Connell the green light to investigate how people
respond to infection by Bacillus anthracis, the bacterial agent that causes
anthrax. With $3 million (US) from the Department of Defense, Connell hoped
to learn how to detect the bacteria within hours of infection. But thanks
to the hurdles put in her path, it took until this past July for Connell
to get her hands on the bacterial strain for her study. Today, her team
at the Center for BioDefense at the University of Medicine and Dentistry
of New Jersey works 12-hour days to make up for lost time.

"It was a really long wait and
a frustrating wait,'' said Connell, the center's director. Connell's predicament--and
similar ones of other scientists--raises questions as to whether the federal
government is working at cross-purposes in its effort to fight bioterrorism.
As the National Institutes of Health prepare to spend nearly $2 billion
on bioterrorism research, Congress, the military, and commercial organizations
have tightened restrictions for getting the strains scientists need to
conduct their studies.

"There is a conflict here,'' said
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist who represents the Federation
of American Scientists. "They want to set up new labs and have all these
people working, but they're making it hard to get hold of [strains]."
Government officials say precautions are necessary in a post-Sept. 11 world,
where anthrax attacks last autumn killed five people, and where allowing
dangerous bacteria to fall into the wrong hands could lead to similar,
or even worse, tragedies.

"The frustration is absolutely
there,'' acknowledged Carole Heilman, director of the Division of Microbiology
and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID). "We recognized this would be an issue at the beginning,
and we told the [scientific] community we would try to establish a repository
[of bacterial strains]. Will it happen tomorrow? Absolutely not.''

FUNDS, RED TAPE APLENTY

In the new 2003 budget, the NIH
will get $1.8 billion to encourage scientists to study potential agents
of terrorism such as anthrax. One of the government's first responses to
last year's anthrax attacks was to direct money to the Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md., to speed TIGR's genomic analysis of
at least 14 strains of B. anthracis. The project will create a database
of genomic information to help researchers learn more about the genetic
variability that causes differences in the biological properties of individual
strains.

But even as the government encourages
such research, there are reports that government may also be a hindrance.
At the moment, the NIH requires research results be made public. Recent
developments, however, leave scientists wondering about the ease of future
biodefense research, and the public availability of research results.

When Congress last fall passed
the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Response Act of 2001, one provision
tightened regulations for select agents--a special designation for 36 dangerous
pathogens, such as B. anthracis, that requires background checks and security
clearances before scientists can use them. Congress began tracking the
transfer of these pathogens in 1997, after microbiologists Larry Wayne
Harris of Ohio and William Leavitt of Nevada were charged with possessing
anthrax for use as a weapon.

The congressional act expanded
the list of regulated agents to nearly 60. It required anyone possessing
such agents to register with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
and it called for new regulations for handling such agents. Because the
government is still writing the regulations, it is impossible to say how
restrictive they might be, says Janet Shoemaker, director of public and
scientific affairs for the 42,000-member American Society of Microbiology
(ASM). The Bioterrorism Act, for instance, calls for labs to implement
new security measures while working with select agents. Just how costly,
cumbersome, and intrusive those measures might be will remain unclear for
some months.

"There's a political reality here
that has to be faced by our community,'' Shoemaker said. "We hope the rules
of reason and common sense will prevail as these regulations are developed
so we don't regulate this research out of existence.''

TIGHTER SECURITY

Efforts are under way to tighten
regulations elsewhere: In New Jersey, where the state health commissioner
assembled a panel to evaluate transportation of select agents, some are
proposing that it be illegal to mail select agents in the state. Others
are talking about using police escorts. Some biology journals were reportedly
under White House pressure, which the White House denied, to restrict information
that could be helpful to terrorists. There are worries that federal agencies
may assess the risks of research before agreeing to fund it, may deem new
areas of bioscience as government classified, may review work prior to
publication, and may insist that the methods sections of some research
papers be removed.

Some critics say such actions
would stifle research that might prepare America for future bioterrorist
attacks. "Questions have been coming up as to whether or not people could
withhold [research] materials,'' said Ronald Atlas, president of the ASM.
"Once you publish [research findings], others [should] be in a position
to repeat the work.''

Connell's experience also raises
the question whether scientists seeking dangerous bacterial strains must
now go through the nation's military, which for many can be a daunting
and lengthy process. After Connell acquired select-agent status, which
took the better part of a year, she first tried to get B. anthracis strains
from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), which houses one of the
world's largest supplies of bacteria samples. After filling out complicated
applications and undergoing rigorous reviews, Connell discovered nearly
two months into the process that the ATCC was no longer shipping select
agents.

While the organization still maintains
select-agent donations, "We have just elected not to distribute it,'' said
Nancy Wysocki, the ATCC's vice president of human resources and public
relations, who would not elaborate on the reasons. Observers say the decision
was based on fears of liability should the shipped materials be used for
bioterrorism.

It was nearly winter of 2001,
so Connell turned to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. "We had to do a lot of very complicated paperwork
involving lawyers,'' Connell says. "We were pretty much ready to go, and
all of a sudden, [the Army] put a hold on shipping out organisms. We waited
until July [of 2002], and finally they released the organism.'' The Department
of Defense did not return a phone call seeking comment. One scientist who
asked not to be named says: "Doing an experiment with the Army just takes
forever. There are layers and layers of approvals.''

The ATCC's refusal to ship select
agents also complicates the work of Tom Montville, a professor of food
microbiology at Rutgers University, who is applying for funds from the
US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to develop
research surrogates for B. anthracis. Montville contacted one government
lab that maintains a nonpathogenic strain of B. anthracis, but "they wouldn't
even answer my E-mail,'' he said. "I think ... everybody is scared to hell.
The only way to get these strains now is to know someone who has them.
At some point, [such restrictions] will impede research to the degree that
only terrorists will have the cultures.''

Connell believes some government
restrictions are necessary, but so is collaboration. "It's a new era, and
we need to feel our way,'' Connell said. "If we can actually coordinate
our efforts, ... we can enter into a new age of working with these organisms
in a safe manner.''

NORFOLK -- State environmental
regulators on Friday approved a request to ship one truckload of anthrax-related
wastes from NBC headquarters in New York to an incinerator in Norfolk for
disposal.

The materials -- protective gear,
office equipment, papers, carpets -- will arrive by police escort at American
Waste Industries on East Indian River Road some time next week and be burned,
officials said.

City officials and local lawmakers
were informed of the decision in advance, they said Friday -- unlike in
January, when state regulators and the south Norfolk waste company came
under fire for not telling people about shipments from anthrax cleanups
in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

``All loops have been connected
this time; everyone's in line with this,'' city spokesman Bob Batcher said
Friday.

Robert L. Earl, president of American
Waste Industries, said the material is part of an earlier disposal contract
that was put on hold because of national security concerns.

As before, Earl said, the wastes
will arrive at his plant after being decontaminated with a chlorine solution
and ``really pose no health risk to anyone.''

They are burned at temperatures
between 1,400 and 1,800 degrees; anthrax spores are not thought to survive
temperatures above 300 degrees, experts have said.

NBC headquarters in New York City
was the site of an anthrax attack last year, along with congressional offices
and postal facilities in Washington and New Jersey.

Cleanup crews, wearing plastic
``moon suits,'' scoured the buildings before reopening them. Those suits,
along with cleanup equipment and any office materials that may have been
exposed to anthrax spores, are what will be coming to Norfolk.

The Virginia Department of Environmental
Quality received the shipment request Friday and approved it later that
day, spokesman Bill Hayden said.

For security reasons, Hayden would
not say what day the materials would arrive or what route from New York
would be used.

By Martin WalkerUPI Chief International CorrespondentFrom the International DeskPublished 10/20/2002 10:27 AM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Oct. 20
(UPI) -- Czech intelligence officials have knocked down one of the few
clear links between al Qaida terrorists and the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein, UPI has learned.

Senior Czech intelligence officials
have told their American counterparts that they now have "no confidence"
in their earlier report of direct meetings in Prague between Mohammed Atta,
leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers and an Iraqi diplomat stationed in Prague
who has since been expelled for "activities inconsistent with his diplomatic
status."

"Quite simply, we think the source
for this story may have invented the meeting that he reported. We can find
no corroborative evidence for the meeting and the source has real credibility
problems " a high-ranking source close to Czech intelligence told UPI Sunday.

The initial report of the meeting
in June 2000 claimed that Atta had met Ahmad al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence
official based in Prague under diplomatic cover, whose movements were being
routinely monitored by BIS, the Czech intelligence service. The report
also suggested that the Iraqi was probably the source of $100,000 that
Atta suddenly obtained to finance the U.S. leg of the terror mission.

The report went on to claim that
Atta returned to Prague on April 9 last year on a three-day mission to
see al-Ani once more, just two weeks before the majority of the hijack
team left Saudi Arabia for the United States. The report was then publicly
confirmed by Czech Interior Minister Stanislas Gross, on the basis of the
initial assessment of the BIS.

The nearest to a smoking gun connecting
Iraq to al Qaida, the Czech report was taken very seriously in Washington,
in the face of growing skepticism at the Central Intelligence Agency.

But other influential figures
in Washington, including former CIA Director James Woolsey and former Assistant
Secretary of Defense Richard Perle pursued their own inquiries using their
own sources, and have now also been told by high-ranking Czech sources
that they no longer stand by the initial report. Perle, in Prague this
weekend for a meeting of the Trilateral Commission, was told in person
Sunday that the BIS now doubts that any such meeting between Atta and al-Ani
in fact took place.

The question of the Czech meeting,
and whether it ever happened, is just one aspect of a growing dispute within
the George W. Bush administration, with officials close to the White House
leaping to conclusions while the CIA remains skeptical. There is a separate
argument over Iraq's attempt to smuggle a consignment of specialized aluminium
tubes, cited by President Bush as a sign that Iraq was building a gas centrifuge
systém to create weapons-grade uranium.

CIA experts doubt whether the
tubes in question were suitable for the supposed task, and believe they
were intended instead for use in missile engines, still a clear violation
of Iraqi commitments to the United Nations, but not necessarily proof of
nuclear intent.

"One of the most dangerous things
in this business is to start believing a report simply because it fits
with your preconceptions and confirms what you always wanted to believe,"
a Czech intelligence source told UPI.

Saturday 19 October, 2002US anthrax scare Investigations home in on ex-Rhodie
army man

Innocent Chofamba-SitholeAssistant Editor

AS American law enforcement agencies
grapple with the frustrating mystery surrounding the October 2001 anthrax
attacks, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents are reported to
be in the country and in South Africa in search of information on principal
suspect, Steven J. Hatfill, who has lived and worked in both countries.

An impeccable source with the
American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed to the Sunday Mirror that
FBI agents were in the country to try and dig up information on Hatfill’s
role in the Rhodesian army’s biochemical weapons project, which led to
the outbreak of the worst reported case of anthrax in the world, between
1978 and 1980.

"We are not sure if the FBI is
still in Zimbabwe or has gone to South Africa," the source said.

"American law enforcement is in
southern Africa to confirm or disprove the many dubious claims on Hatfill’s
resume and probably to build a character profile," added the source.

Described by US Attorney-General
John Ashcroft as a "person of interest", a vague and rather unfamiliar
term to veteran FBI agents, Hatfill has become the leading name in the
investigation into the most dramatic act of bio-terrorism that America
has ever seen.

The FBI is also reportedly keen
to establish the link between Hatfill and the late University of Zimbabwe
(UZ) Medical School professor, Robert Burns Symington, who is strongly
believed to have worked on the Rhodesian white supremacist regime’s biochemical
weapons project during the 1970s anti-colonial struggle.

Symington, whom former colleagues
at the then Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine have described as "a little
white supremacist", allegedly facilitated the entry into the school of
Hatfill in 1979.

"I did suspect that Symington
was connected to the military, but I did not know his connection with Hatfill.
I only thought Hatfill had come in via the military, since he had connections
with the Rhodesian army," said a former colleague of Symington’s, on condition
of anonymity. He also lectured Hatfill during his days as a student at
the school.

A copy of Hatfill’s military records,
obtained by Newsweek, shows that Hatfill joined the US Marines in 1971,
but was discharged a year later. During an interview with The Washington
Post, Hatfill’s lawyer, Victor Glasberg, refused to respond to questions
on Hatfill’s 15 years in southern Africa, saying it was irrelevant to the
anthrax investigation, but noted that Hatfill developed his interest and
speciality in viruses such as Ebola while in Africa.

Hatfill served in the Rhodesian
Special Air Service (SAS) and the notorious Selous Scouts before enrolling
for a medicine degree with the Godfrey Huggins School. Symington and the
Rhodesian army are alleged to have brokered an arrangement with university
authorities to have Hatfill accepted as a student. The school, even to
this day, does not accept foreign students coming from countries with medical
training institutions.

Symington later left the UZ for
South Africa soon after independence, where he died of a heart attack a
year after joining the University of Cape Town.

After graduating from the UZ in
1983, his protégé, Hatfill, also left for South Africa, where
he acquired several masters’ degrees before joining the apartheid regime’s
military medical corps on a one-year assignment to Antarctica. He returned
to the US in the mid-1990s, where he worked as a government bio-defence
scientist at Fort Detrick’s Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases. Hatfill regaled to colleagues with tales of his exploits as a
cold warrior in the 1970’s, fighting with the elite SAS troops and the
infamous Selous Scouts.

But US records show that he was
in America for at least two of the years he claimed to have been fighting
in Rhodesia. Apparently, Hatfill’s biography is riddled with gaps where
classified projects presumably belong. From 1975 to 1978, he served with
the US Army Institute for Military Assistance, while simultaneously serving
in the Rhodesian military.

Contacted for comment over reports
of the FBI’s presence in the country, US Embassy director of Information
Bruce Wharton said: "The case of the anthrax attacks remains an open investigation
and a matter of public concern. I can’t speak on the status of the FBI
investigations, but as an embassy, I can say that there is no FBI in Zimbabwe
right now."

However, US sources close to the
investigations said the FBI was in the region to try and fill the gaps
in Hatfill’s resume, which centre on his probable links to the Rhodesian
army’s bio-chemical weapons project, suspected to have caused the 1978-1980
anthrax outbreak. Nearly two hundred people died, while over 10 738 cases
of human anthrax were reported. Thirteen years after independence, a former
senior white member of the Rhodesian army admitted the use of anthrax in
the war by the military.

"It’s true that anthrax was used
in an experimental role, and the idea came from the Army Psychological
Operations," he said.

The apartheid regime in South
Africa also ran a Chemical and Biological Warfare programme (CBW) in which
toxic and poison weapons were used in political assassinations. South Africa’s
Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1998 heard that in the late 1970’s,
the apartheid government provided anthrax and cholera to Rhodesian troops
for use against nationalist guerrillas in their war to topple white minority
rule. Dr Wouter Basson, a former Special Forces Army Brigadier, ran the
South African programme. Infamously referred to as "Dr. Death", Basson
refused to testify before the TRC, and when he did, he only gave limited
information, just to secure immunity from prosecution. It is not clear
whether Hatfill, during his engagement with South Africa’s army medical
corps, worked on Basson’s CBW.

"This could be the link the FBI
is trying to establish during their visit to that country," said one military
source.

Security Minister Nicholas Goche
was still unreachable for comment on his mobile phone by last night.

Monday,
Oct. 28, 2002Sleuth
Without a BadgeRetiree Ed Lake
has become obsessed with the anthrax case — and he has a theory about who
did itBY WENDY COLE/RACINE

Ed lake is not a cop. He has no
formal training in forensics or any other aspect of law enforcement. But
in the past year he has made it his business to master the intricacies
of handwriting analysis, envelope technology and the schedule of U.S. mail
pickups in and around Princeton, N.J. He can tell you all about cross-contamination,
the common misspellings of penicillin and the "pharmaceutical fold" used
by chemists for centuries to dispense medicines — and by person or persons
unknown to wrap scrawled terror messages around a few billion spores of
surprisingly pure anthrax.

Lake, 65, a retired computer specialist,
was planning to spend this year writing his seventh screenplay (sci-fi,
time travel), convinced that this one would be good enough to get produced.
Instead he has become obsessed with the hunt for the anthrax killer. He
works on the case up to eight hours a day, reading everything written about
the subject and launching his own unofficial investigations. Several times
a day he logs on to the Internet to share his findings with four dozen
similarly obsessed citizens — some of them journalists, some of them research
scientists, some of them, like Lake, armchair detectives who won't rest
until the case is cracked. "I don't like to see things incomplete," says
Lake. "I see it as a mystery, and I've got all these facts in front of
me. I just need to figure out the missing piece."

To help organize his thoughts
— and assist fellow investigators — Lake has assembled what may be the
most comprehensive website on the anthrax case outside the FBI, anthraxinvestigation.com.
Though he insists that he's no G-man wannabe, Lake has sent dozens of his
hypotheses to the bureau over the past year — and received some appreciative
feedback in return. ("Knowledge is power," wrote a New York City agent
in an e-mail thanking Lake for alerting him to the website.) Among the
theories Lake has shared with the feds is his idea, based on the "sloped
letters and little balls at the end of the strokes," that the notes were
written by a child — perhaps the perpetrator's son or daughter — copying
the words from a computer printout.

Conventional wisdom among anthrax
aficionados is that the mailings were the work of an American scientist
with bioweapons experience who was frustrated by how little attention the
U.S. government was paying to the threat these weapons pose. Lake
likes that theory a lot better than the ones that blame al-Qaeda or Saddam
Hussein. But he doesn't agree with those who tried to drop a dime on Steven
Hatfill. He's the former Army scientist whose house has been repeatedly
searched and who was famously described by Attorney General John Ashcroft
as a "person of interest" (there are about 25 others, according to the
FBI). Lake is convinced that Hatfill must have an unimpeachable alibi or
the FBI would have hauled him in months ago.

It may actually be a mistake,
Lake thinks, to look for a lone anthrax killer. He speculates that there
were two co-conspirators: one who supplied the anthrax and a second who
refined the spores and mailed them.

Lake has compiled a profile of
the refiner-mailer that is striking in its specificity. It's a man, he
writes, probably in his 40s, who lives within commuting distance of New
York City; reads the New York Post; subscribes to cable TV; watches Bill
O'Reilly on the Fox News Channel; was in the Trenton, N.J., area on Sept.
17 and Oct. 8, 2001; and may have traveled last year to Indianapolis, Ind.
(from where a threatening letter to O'Reilly was mailed, its handwriting
resembling that on the anthrax-tainted letters). You won't read anything
like that on the FBI website. On the other hand, Lake isn't bound by the
constraints that keep the FBI from broadcasting even informed speculation;
that's part of what makes his work so interesting.

Others have criticized the FBI
for foot dragging or worse, but not Lake. It's easy to spin theories, he
says. "But the FBI has to make sure it has an airtight case." The bureau,
for its part, is less generous, officially saying Lake hasn't added anything
to the case that it didn't already know.

Lake remains undaunted. FBI agents
come and go. In fact, a key member of the FBI's Washington anthrax team
— Arthur Eberhart, special agent in charge — retired last summer. But Lake
soldiers on. First thing each morning he's back at his computer scouring
the Internet for fresh leads. He vows not to quit until the mystery is
solved. And then, maybe, he will get back to his screenplay.

With reporting by
Andrea Dorfman/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington

Posted
on Mon, Oct. 21, 2002The Aberdeen News

Pakistan
Police Said to Detain Doctor over Anthrax

Reuters

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani police,
working with US FBI agents, detained a doctor near the eastern city of
Lahore Monday and accused him of supplying anthrax to Islamic militant
groups, the doctor's brother said.

Imran Aziz told Reuters his brother,
Dr. Amir Aziz, was first questioned at his home Saturday by police and
two foreigners identified by police as agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

But local police and a US embassy
spokesman said they knew nothing about it.

There have been several anthrax
hoax attacks--often involving letters containing white powder--in the United
States, Europe and Asia since the hijack suicide assaults on New York and
Washington on September 11 2001.

Anthrax is considered a first
biological weapon of choice because it is easy to obtain. Infection can
be treated with antibiotics.

A colleague at the Ghurki Trust
Hospital just outside Lahore said police, again accompanied by foreign
officials, came to the hospital Monday and took Aziz away for further questioning.

"He has been accused of providing
anthrax to militant groups," Imran Aziz said.

"He was a religious man who helped
anyone who came to him, as a doctor," Imran added. "He had never indulged
in the kind of activity he is suspected of by the FBI."

His colleague said Aziz had been
questioned several times in the last four or five months, but local police
denied having any information about the doctor or having made any arrest.

"Dr Amir Aziz was not wanted by
Lahore police and we have not arrested him," said District Police Official
Javid Noor. "We know nothing about him."

A US embassy spokesman in Islamabad
said he had no information about the incident.

Locals said Aziz was a respected
orthopedic surgeon who had previously worked as chief executive of Lahore's
main Jinnah Hospital and had also spent some time as a doctor for the Pakistani
cricket team.

Islamic militant groups in Pakistan
have been blamed for a series of bomb attacks in the country in the last
year, mostly directed at Christian and Western targets.

Insight
on the News - Daily Insight Issue: 10/29/02

No
Progress in Battle on Bioterror - Why?By Nicholas Stix

Media presentations of the investigation
into the anthrax-letter attacks that last fall killed five people and sickened
over a dozen others have been driven by theories, speculation and intense
political partisanship. That situation has arisen due to various political
forces' desire to kidnap the case in order to cause the U.S. biodefense
program to be shut down, and due to a paucity of reliable, hard knowledge.
The human mind hates a vacuum and ignorance is a most hospitable host to
rampant speculation. Thus do we find ourselves no better informed on the
one-year anniversary of the attacks than we were at the time.

With the help of anonymous FBI
profilers and activist academics such as Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the
American media have been wed to the notion that a disgruntled, white male
loner from within the U.S. biowarfare-defense program at USAMRIID (United
States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases) in Maryland
stole the anthrax bacteria, secretly did the lab work all by himself and
carried out the attacks, perhaps to warn the public of the dangers of bioterrorism.
Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Shane has dubbed this the "bioevangelist"
theory.

The anthrax found in the letters
was of the Ames strain, which originated in an infected cow in Texas in
1981. Until a 1997 federal law mandated strict controls and record-keeping
for the scientific use and sharing of toxic substances, the Ames strain
was passed around the world by scientists via mutual cooperation, with
virtually no controls or oversight.

While it is possible that a small
sample of the anthrax used in the attack was stolen from a U.S. bioweapons
lab and then subsequently grown into larger quantities, it is much more
likely that the perpetrator obtained the anthrax from any of a multitude
of foreign sources.

Dr. Paul Keim, a Northern Arizona
University professor of microbiology, performed an exhaustive genetic analysis
on a sample of the attack anthrax, comparing it to the same analysis of
Ames anthrax samples held at U.S. bioweapons-defense installations. In
Dr. Keim's study, published in the May 9, 2002, edition of Science magazine,
he concluded that his results were unable to shed any light on the source
of the anthrax — other than to conclude that its original source was the
same 1981 Texas cow that was the source of the Ames anthrax samples at
U.S. biowarfare-defense installations.

The notion that a single, renegade
scientist secretly could have created the weapon has been shot down by
Dr. Richard O. Spertzel, the former head of the biology section of the
United Nations Special Commission on Iraq. On Sept. 18, in London's Financial
Times, Dr. Spertzel argued, "I've heard nothing that has changed my mind."
Spertzel is persuaded the anthrax attack involved active state support:
"You could not possibly make that quality of product in a clandestine fashion.
It's not the sort of thing you can do in your garage or in your basement."

While some experts maintain that
it would be possible for a determined individual — even a talented bench
technician — to produce high-quality anthrax with one trillion spores per
gram, it seems extremely unlikely that this could be done without attracting
attention. A lone bioweaponeer with the requisite knowledge and skills
still would have extreme difficulty transferring the process to the type
of setup that could be made in a basement or remote location.

And the cost would run into the
millions. The specific equipment used to produce weaponized anthrax — through
the various steps of initial bioreaction through weaponization by chemical
treatment, proper spore-size control and drying — likely would run to several
hundred thousand dollars. Add to that sum the required ancillary equipment,
including scanning electron microscopes, not to mention the multimillion
dollar infrastructure.

Substituting cheaper equipment
for the tools normally used by a skilled scientist would cause serious
problems of "process transfer." The preceding term commonly is used in
the chemical and engineering community to describe taking a manufacturing
process from one site and starting it up at another site, sometimes using
different equipment. It almost would be impossible to repeat the original
lab process and produce the same high-quality product with a homemade set-up
without hundreds of trial-and-error tests. And when the first reasonable-looking,
pure anthrax powder was produced, it would be essential to test it.
This only can be done by sacrificing hundreds of Rhesus monkeys — an activity
that is unlikely to go unnoticed by the neighbors.

If Drs. Keim and Spertzel are
correct, the authorities have wasted precious time and resources on a wild
goose chase. Hopefully, the lost time has not ensured the escape from detection
of the anthrax terrorists.

Nicholas Stix is
the associate editor of toogoodreports.com and has published articles in
Insight, The American Enterprise and Middle American News.

Why
Is Dr. Hatfill A Person Of Interest?By Reed Irvine and Notra Trulock
sitting in for Cliff Kincaid October 24, 2002

At an Accuracy in Media conference
early this month, Steven Hatfill, who has lost two jobs as a result of
the FBI’s targeting him in its anthrax probe, said he was considering filing
some law suits. He didn’t say who he might sue. One person of interest
to him might be Barbara Hatch Rosenberg. She believes the anthrax letters
were sent by a former employee of a U.S. government lab, a description
that fits Steven Hatfill.

Rosenberg has been quoted as saying
that the FBI knows who sent out the anthrax letters, but isn't arresting
him, because he has been involved in secret biological weapons that the
U.S. does not want revealed. Senator Tom Daschle has bought her theory,
declaring that the source of the anthrax was domestic. Hatfill was then
designated a "person of interest" in the FBI search for the anthrax killer.

Rosenberg is usually identified
as being with the prestigious-sounding Federation of American Scientists.
But the group has moved to distance itself from her, declaring on its Web
site that it was "not involved in any effort to publicly identify individual
suspects or ‘persons of interest’ in the anthrax investigation. It has
not and will not publish such accusations."

Rosenberg’s views on the case
have been heavily publicized by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof,
who all but named Hatfill as a "person of interest" in his column. Rosenberg
was also an advisor to a TV program on "Bioterror" based on a book, by
Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad. They cite her as an
"authority" on the biological-weapons treaty and point out she pushed Clinton
to adopt a protocol to the treaty. About one month after the anthrax
attacks, Broad and Miller wrote a Times article explaining Rosenberg’s
theory of the case and noting that it "is getting attention in Europe,
where the environmental group Greenpeace Germany is citing it as credible."
[Greenpeace has staged anti-American and anti-NATO demonstrations in Europe,
calling a U.S. strategic defense against missiles "madness."]

The Greenpeace connection suggests
that Rosenberg travels with the left. She has received funding from the
Ploughshares Fund, a radical group that favors a series of treaties that
would disarm America in the face of foreign threats. Greenpeace itself
noted that her views parallel those of Jan von Aken of the "Sunshine Project,"
which is based in Germany. Van Aken is a former staff member of Greenpeace
Germany.

The Sunshine Project has an anti-American
slant and accuses the U.S. of making chemical weapons in violation of a
U.N. treaty. In fact, it makes the outrageous claim that an American invasion
of Iraq may include "the depravity of the U.S. waging chemical warfare
against Iraq to prevent it from developing chemical weapons." The group
has called for a U.N. weapons-inspection team to be sent not to Iraq but
to America to investigate alleged U.S. violations of international law.
It’s bizarre, but the FBI may be taking such nonsense seriously.

One
year since the anthrax attacks on the US Congress

By Patrick Martin24 October 2002

The Bush administration and the
American media have passed by the anniversary of the anthrax attacks on
leading congressional Democrats in virtual silence. There has been little
media commentary assessing the meaning of the attempt to kill Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy,
whose offices were targeted with letters filled with trillions of lethal
anthrax spores that could have killed dozens, if not hundreds, of people.

The mailings to Daschle and Leahy
followed a series of mailings of less potent anthrax spores to media outlets—a
tabloid office in Florida, the New York Post, and NBC News. The Democrats
and the media are habitual targets of the ultra-right in the United States.
But both federal investigators and the media itself have been largely silent
about the likelihood of a right-wing political motivation for the anthrax
attacks.

Nor has the media spotlight been
placed on the manifest failure of federal investigators to apprehend the
person or persons responsible for the attacks, which killed five people
and caused serious and potentially disabling illness in a dozen others.
Once it became clear, within a few days of the attack, that the most likely
suspects were fascist-minded elements in the US military-intelligence establishment,
not terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda or Iraq, the FBI effectively shoved
its investigation onto the back burner.

According to scientists who have
discussed the investigation with the press, there are extraordinary delays
and unexplained wrong turns in the FBI investigation:

* The FBI could have identified
the institutions that possessed the Ames strain of anthrax used in the
attacks with a routine database search. But subpoenas for samples of the
bacteria were not sent out until February, four months after the attacks.

* Receipt of the samples was delayed
by another two to four months because no proper storage room had been prepared
at the Ft. Detrick Army germ warfare lab, which was to test them.

* Investigators did not locate
the contaminated mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey, where the anthrax letters
were likely mailed from, until August, ten months after the attacks. Testing
of the 600 mailboxes on that postal route should have taken only two weeks,
one expert said.

* Investigators waited until September
2002, 11 months later, to conduct exhaustive environmental testing at the
Florida tabloid newspaper building where the first person to die of anthrax,
photo editor Robert Stevens, worked.

* Investigators have still not
spoken with all of the US scientists who made anthrax for the military’s
biological weapons program in the 1950s and 1960s, although only two dozen
are still alive. None were interviewed until months after the attacks.

Strangest of all, of course, is
the treatment of Dr. Steven Hatfill, whose name was reportedly provided
to the FBI within a few days of the anthrax attacks. Hatfill had a grievance
against the government because his security clearance was revoked in August
2001, ultimately costing him his job at defense contractor SAIC. He was,
according to his own resume, familiar with both dry and wet forms of the
anthrax toxin. He had written a novel about a germ warfare attack on the
US Congress, and commissioned a study of the threat of anthrax-laced letters
that included information on the best size of particles and kinds of envelopes.

Although Hatfill had opportunity,
motive and the necessary skills, and reportedly failed several lie detector
tests, he was never arrested or detained. His name only came to public
attention after a campaign of exposure by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons
expert at the Federation of American Scientists, and New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof.

Rosenberg charged that Hatfill
was being given high-level protection by the government because of his
involvement in top secret germ warfare projects. “We know that the FBI
is looking at this person, and it’s likely that he participated in the
past in secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed,”
she wrote. “And this raises the question of whether the FBI may be dragging
its feet somewhat and may not be so anxious to bring to public light the
person who did this.”

Kristof detailed Hatfill’s role
as a military/intelligence operative for white racist-ruled Rhodesia and
South Africa. He suggested that Hatfill—whom he initially called “Mr. Z.”,
in deference to the government’s refusal to name him—was still on active
duty for the US government in operations in Central Asia.

As the World Socialist Web Site
commented at the time: “Kristof’s central accusation is that the anthrax
investigation has reached a dead end, not because of the lack of evidence,
but because the prime suspect has powerful friends in high places and enjoys
official protection....Kristof’s column points inexorably to the conclusion
that the Bush administration is an accessory after the fact—if not before
it—in the attempted assassination of the official political opposition.”

Neither Rosenberg nor Kristof
provided definitive proof that Hatfill was the anthrax terrorist. But they
detailed circumstantial evidence that was far more convincing than the
vague suspicions, or racist innuendo, used by the Justice Department in
its roundup of thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants after the September
11 terrorist attacks. The Justice Department’s reluctance to move against
Hatfill was in sharp contrast to the agency’s practice in other terrorist
investigations. If the prime suspect in the anthrax case had been a Muslim—or
even better, an Iraqi—Attorney General John Ashcroft would likely have
designated him an “enemy combatant” and had him locked up indefinitely.

That Hatfill had—and still enjoys—high-level
protection is demonstrated by political associations that came to light
after the FBI was compelled to move more openly against him. After the
third search of Hatfill’s Frederick, Maryland apartment, the Justice Department
sent a letter to Louisiana State University to forbid the school to hire
Hatfill as a $150,000 deputy director of the National Center for Biomedical
Research and Training, an LSU lab financed by the federal government.

Hatfill fought back, holding a
public press conference at which he denied any connection to the anthrax
attacks. He has rallied sections of the ultra-right to his defense. His
press spokesman and close friend, Pat Clawson, is a former CNN journalist
who now works on the radio talk show of right-wing activist and Iran-Contra
plotter Oliver North. The right-wing propaganda outfit Accuracy in Media
hosted his press conferences and published statements denouncing the alleged
FBI “persecution.” Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican,
raised the issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee and wrote a letter of
protest to Ashcroft, declaring, “‘ It is important that the government
act according to laws, rules, policies, and procedures, rather than make
arbitrary decisions that affect individual citizens.”

Perhaps the most significant intervention
came from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which denounced
Rosenberg and Kristof for pressuring the FBI, and declared that the real
culprit in the anthrax attacks was Iraq.

On October 9, the Baltimore Sun—one
of the few daily newspapers to pursue the anthrax issue seriously—published
a report claiming that Hatfill had lied repeatedly about his educational
and employment record, including forging a bogus certificate for a Ph.D.
from Rhodes University that he had not received.

Again, the double standard is
staggering. Muslim and Arab immigrants were seized by federal authorities
and detained indefinitely for missing deadlines for submitting routine
paperwork that would never have been the occasion for arrest or prosecution
before September 11.

The anthrax attacks had extraordinary
political significance. Daschle and Leahy are among the highest-ranking
leaders of the official opposition party in Washington. Daschle is Senate
majority leader, the top Democrat in Congress, while Leahy’s committee
handles such politically sensitive issues as the confirmation of judicial
nominees and legislation on abortion, criminal justice and civil rights.

During the first several days
after an anthrax-laced letter was opened October 15, 2001 by a Daschle
aide, sending spores into the ventilation system of the office building,
the entire building had to be closed and cleaned, putting dozens of senators
into temporary accommodations for several months. The Republican-controlled
House of Representatives voted to adjourn indefinitely, and Senate Republican
leader Trent Lott initially proposed that the Senate do likewise.

There is a curious coincidence
between what Lott proposed and the decision by the Bush administration
after the September 11 terrorist attacks to establish a shadow government
in secret bunkers which would provide continuity in the event of a nuclear/chemical/biological
attack that destroyed Washington DC. The shadow government was also limited
to the executive branch, making no provision for the safeguarding or reconstitution
of an elected legislature.

The political consequences of
the anthrax terrorism and the Bush administration’s plans for a shadow
government dovetailed completely. Both would have shut down the legislative
branch and left the executive branch with virtually unrestricted power.

It was revealed last December
that the anthrax spores in the Daschle and Leahy letters were genetically
identical to those produced at US germ warfare facilities at Ft. Detrick,
Maryland and Dugway, Utah. In other words, the Democratic Party leadership
was targeted for assassination using weapons produced by (or stolen from)
the American military itself. The whole affair exudes the stench of an
attempted political coup.

The Justice Department has renewed
its campaign to indict Steven Hatfill in the court of public opinion for
last fall’s unsolved anthrax killings. ABC’s ace investigative reporter
Brian Ross, who had reported unfounded hearsay implicating Hatfill last
June, returned to the story on ABC’s World News Tonight on Oct. 22, claiming
that three bloodhounds had independently led the FBI directly to Hatfill’s
apartment after sniffing scent extracted from anthrax letters posted last
year.

Accuracy in Media has been looking
into this story since Newsweek first reported it in August. We found that
the FBI had the dogs flown here from California, even though there are
at least 15 police dog teams in Maryland, including one that is on call
with the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team. Brian Ross, without mentioning the
Maryland dog teams, said the FBI considered the California dogs the best
in the country, a view not shared by Maryland law enforcement officers.
He ignored the controversy over the "new technology" used by the FBI to
collect the scent that supposedly led the dogs to Hatfill.

Had Ross done any investigating,
he would have learned, as we did, that the FBI has invested in the Scent
Transfer Unit-100, which "vacuums" scent from an article onto a "scent
pad." The STU-100 is popular in California, but the two national police
bloodhound associations claim that it is too susceptible to contamination
to be admissible as evidence in court and have refused to endorse its use.
They fear that the Bureau’s reliance on the STU-100 could discredit the
use of bloodhounds in all criminal cases.

They cite a 1996 case in California
in which a jury found a defendant guilty on the basis of the prosecution’s
claim that the scent pad from an STU-100 had enabled a dog to track down
the defendant. Police bloodhound handlers from the two national associations
were incensed by "irregularities" in the dog’s use. A dog expert flew to
California to testify for the defense, and one of the most experienced
police dog handlers in the country submitted for the defense a detailed
critique of the STU-100 and the dog handler. On the basis of this testimony,
the judge threw out the jury’s conviction, and this was upheld on appeal.

Police dog handlers in Maryland
are critical of the FBI’s efforts to link Hatfill to the anthrax letters
using the STU-100. Hatfill says that the special agents had him sit in
an empty apartment in the same building where his apartment was located,
and one bloodhound was brought in. He says that he scratched the dog’s
ear and the dog returned the affection. That led the handler to cry, "The
dog is reacting!" Our police sources say that the FBI should have used
a "line-up," requiring the dog to single out the one matching the scent.
They point out that if Hatfill was the only suspect in the room, a good
defense lawyer would argue that the handlers were "directing" the dog to
Hatfill, as they did in the California case where the jury verdict was
overturned.

Ross said that three dogs "were
each given the scent from anthrax letters posted last year, and each independently"
led handlers to Hatfill’s apartment. Which apartment? The vacant one in
which he was sitting or his own? If the only scent the dogs were given
was from an envelope sent through the mail, how could the dogs distinguish
between the person who mailed it, those who delivered it and those who
determined that it contained anthrax?

Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, the special
agent with a Ph.D. in chemistry whose exposure of incompetence and corruption
in the FBI crime lab resulted in partial reforms and his separation from
the Bureau, says what the FBI did is awful. He would like to know if the
FBI has run any scientific validation studies on the STU-100. Such studies
would be designed to determine the percentage of the cases in which the
dogs are able to correctly match or not match humans with STU-100 scent
packs.

Many of the dog handlers interviewed
by AIM believe that the reason the FBI took the dogs to Hatfill’s apartment
was to see if they could scare him into a confession. These handlers say
that is a routine police technique, and it is not illegal. It hasn’t worked
in Hatfill’s case, but the FBI, with assists from ABC and Newsweek, persists
in persecuting him. They can’t prosecute him since he is only "a person
of interest."

SO JOHN MUHAMMAD wasn’t an angry
white male after all. He wasn’t some 20-something suburban loner, another
Timothy McVeigh with militant, right-wing animosities, like all the experts,
criminologists, and profilers spent weeks telling us he would be.

His arrest neatly highlights the
defects in politically correct profiling, the only sort of profiling that’s
still tolerated these days, the kind that invariably concludes that the
suspect — never mind the ethnic and religious realities of the War on Terror
— must be an LWG, a lone white guy.

It was the LWG theory that caused
officials working the sniper case to spend weeks looking in all the wrong
places until Muhammad and his sidekick, John Lee Malvo, were kind enough
to start dropping hints as to their actual identity. Were it not for their
arrogance, authorities would still be pulling over every white van driven
by any white male in the greater D.C. area.

Unfortunately, not all terrorists
are as helpful or as Muhammad and Malvo. Take those responsible for sending
out packets of anthrax to journalists and politicians across the eastern
seaboard last year, who still remain at large. FBI officials are convinced
that an LWG is responsible. After all, the actions fit the profile.

Maybe it’s time to draw up some
new profiles.

Under the current profiling regime,
it’s unacceptable for a cop who, while looking for a suspected drug-dealer,
decides to pull over a suspicious-looking African-American motorist. And
heaven help the airport screener who admits to paying more attention to
the young Arab men passing through his security checkpoints. That sort
of profiling is considered immoral, rank bigotry, and officially, no one,
not even the hard-nosed president or his attorney general, will condone
it.

Yet it’s permissible when the
profilers look at the circumstances of a crime and draw up an ethnic and
personal profile of the likely suspect, as long as the composite sketch
comes out male and light-complexioned. Only the sort of profiling that,
in the case of the snipers anyway, would have suggested the truth — that
the criminal was a non-white, American-hating Muslim — is prohibited.

That’s why throughout Muhammad
and Malvo’s shooting spree, the talking heads went to great pains to assure
the public that although someone was busily terrorizing the nation’s capital,
the acts of terror were most certainly not acts of terrorism.

Yet when authorities found their
man, he defied every stereotype the experts had set for him. Muhammad was
an African-American, a Muslim convert, and a member of Louis Farrakhan’s
odious sect, the Nation of Islam. He openly sympathized with the 9/11 terrorists.
On the LWG scale, he was a mere one for three.

Perhaps the LWG theory isn’t the
catch-all it’s cracked up to be.

And perhaps now, with the nation
at war with Islamic radicals, it’s time to expand our criminal profiles
to consider some of the more likely possibilities when it comes to acts
of terror. While the War on Terror has netted one LWG — John Walker Lindh
— there have been many others who don’t fit the PC profile, starting with
the nineteen 9/11 hijackers and the continuing with Jose Padilla and John
Muhammad.

The next time a terror attack
of some sort unleashes, officials and pundits might want to consider profiles
more consistent with the current geopolitical order — ones not confined
to the LWG theory. In fact, they might want to broaden their investigation
of past attacks, too.

The culprit in last year’s anthrax
scare, we are told, is surely some malcontent white guy — a former, mid-level
government scientist with an ideological axe to grind. For the better part
of the last year, federal officials have trained their attention — without
finding any evidence or filing a charge — on Steven J. Hatfill, a former
U.S. Army scientist who has repeatedly denied any involvement.

On Monday, the Washington Post
exposed the woeful inadequacy of the LWG theory as an explanation for the
anthrax attacks. “A significant number of scientists and biological warfare
experts,” the paper reported, “are expressing skepticism about the FBI’s
view that a single disgruntled American scientist prepared the spores and
mailed the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people last year.” Such
an attack, the experts observe, “would require scientific knowledge, technical
competence, access to expensive equipment [including a $50,000 spray dryer
and an electron microscope worth several times that] and safety know-how
that are probably beyond the capabilities of a lone individual.”

The weapons-grade anthrax used
by last year’s terrorists is 50 times finer than anything ever produced
by the onetime U.S. bio-weapons program and 10 times more so than its former
Soviet counterpart. To achieve that sort of potency, scientists reason,
a terrorist would need a full laboratory, several well-trained assistants,
hundreds of thousands of dollars and, most likely, the support of the local
government.

It just so happens, according
to the Post, that one government is known to possess the necessary equipment
to develop precisely that sort of anthrax — Iraq. Moreover, Saddam Hussein’s
regime has also been known to use the same sort of dispersant, silica,
that terrorists used to spread the spores contained in its lethal envelopes.

Saddam Hussein would seem a more
likely suspect in the anthrax attacks than Steven J. Hatfill, but that’s
apparently an option the FBI is unwilling to pursue, preoccupied as it
is with the LWG theory.

And as long political correctness
continues to inhibit the War on Terror, winning it will prove mightily
difficult.

From AJR,
November 2002 issue

Into
the Spotlight

An FBI search of his home catapulted
an obscure bioweapons expert named Steven J. Hatfill into national prominence
as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation. Was this Richard
Jewell all over again?

By Rachel Smolkin Rachel Smolkin is a Washington-area
freelance reporter. She previously worked as a Washington reporter for
Scripps Howard News Service, as well as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and
the Toledo Blade.

On September 26, 2000, the New
York Times printed a highly unusual "public accounting" of its coverage
of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, held in solitary confinement for nine
months before the government's espionage investigation crumbled.

Although the Times editors remained
"proud" of their work, they acknowledged that "looking back, we also found
some things we wish we had done differently in the course of the coverage
to give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt." The Times editors said
the paper "could have pushed harder to uncover weaknesses in the FBI case
against Dr. Lee." It could have adopted a more consistent tone of journalistic
detachment, avoiding the "sense of alarm" conveyed in official reports
and by investigators, members of Congress and administration officials.

Two years later, federal officials
and the news media have catapulted yet another private citizen into the
public glare. As of AJR's deadline, bioweapons expert Steven J. Hatfill
had not been charged with last year's deadly anthrax mailings. Officially,
he remains a "person of interest"--a legally meaningless term. Again, the
news media have ignited debates about fairness and disputes over the press'
role in a high-profile national security investigation. Again, journalistic
detachment has been threatened or even sacrificed in the rush to disclose
titillating details about Hatfill's allegedly failing polygraph tests and
bloodhounds reportedly going "crazy" as they neared his apartment.

But this time the stakes are even
higher. In the post-9/11 world, many civil libertarians charge that the
federal government, bent on ensnaring terrorists, is trampling basic freedoms.
Their fears heighten journalists' responsibility to scrutinize government
actions, to question every leak, to rethink every assumption. The Bush
administration's law enforcement and security rhetoric, peppered with nebulous
phrases such as "links" to terrorism, "person of interest" and "enemy combatant,"
elevates the need for a skeptical press that cherishes clear English and
basic fairness.

The crush of daily deadlines and
relentless competition make detached reporting arduous, particularly when
dealing with a story of great magnitude. But journalists risk becoming
pawns in the war against terrorism when they report leaks without independent
confirmation, when they relay administration announcements about alleged
terrorists without questioning the timing, when they write breathless profiles
of individuals who have not been convicted of or even charged with a crime.
Heightening the focus on the motives and actions of government officials
could protect innocent people's reputations and preserve journalists' integrity.

"This is a time when so many civil
liberties have been suspended or threatened, and there are so many shortcuts
in the system, that reporters should really be on guard," says Ted Gup,
a journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University and a former
Washington Post reporter. "They should be exposing those shortcuts, not
benefiting from them."

Clearly, some newsrooms understand
this responsibility and warily recall failures in other high-profile government
investigations from the recent past. Already, news analysts and editorial
writers are asking whether the FBI has focused on Hatfill to shift attention
from its failures in the war against terrorism and its lack of progress
in the anthrax investigation. Editorials that chastise the FBI and
Attorney General John Ashcroft for accusing Hatfill "by indirection, by
implication, by actions if not words," as the Omaha World-Herald puts it,
inevitably cite another case of intense public scrutiny of a private citizen:
Richard Jewell.

After a pipe bomb exploded at
Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park in 1996, the press designated Jewell,
a security guard at the park, as the FBI's "prime suspect." (See "Going
to Extremes," October 1996.) The FBI placed Jewell under surveillance and
searched his apartment as television cameras recorded every move. Eventually
federal authorities cleared Jewell. He sued several media organizations,
winning in excess of $2 million, according to published reports.

In an eerie case of déjà
vu, television cameras rolled again on June 25, 2002, while federal investigators
combed through Hatfill's Frederick, Maryland, apartment. Until that time,
no major newspaper had named Hatfill as a subject of scrutiny in the anthrax
case, although he had been quoted in the past as an expert on bioterrorism.

Hatfill's anonymity vanished after
that voluntary June 25 search, captured by reporters and news helicopters.
On August 1, the FBI returned, this time with a criminal search warrant,
and the media circus returned as well. Ashcroft and other law enforcement
officials described Hatfill as one of a number of "persons of interest"
but did not identify others or subject them to a public investigation.

As federal authorities intensified
their focus on Hatfill, news accounts explored his past association with
the Selous Scouts of the white Rhodesian Army and apparent discrepancies
in his résumé over academic degrees and military service.
Simultaneously, reporters warned of treating Hatfill like Jewell and reminded
readers that Jewell had been wrongly spotlighted. The result was sometimes
disjointed. Journalists acknowledged the FBI's fallibility. But instead
of questioning the FBI's techniques and approach in the anthrax investigation,
many reporters focused almost exclusively on Hatfill's alleged faults.

On August 11, the besieged bioterrorism
authority tried to salvage his reputation. Hatfill held a news conference
to proclaim his innocence and accused federal authorities of trying to
make him the "fall guy" for the anthrax deaths. He held a second news conference
on August 25 to blast the FBI for its tactics in the anthrax investigation.

A steady stream of coverage continued
to keep Hatfill's name in the news. In early September, newspapers reported
that Louisiana State University had fired Hatfill from a research position
after receiving a Justice Department e-mail instructing the school not
to use him on government-financed work. The FBI searched Hatfill's home
again on September 11, this time without live coverage because networks
were focused on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

L. Lin Wood, Jewell's attorney,
credits the press with "great improvement" in its reporting on Hatfill
vis-à-vis the way it treated his client. "The media has shown greater
restraint and has served more as a watchdog than in the Richard Jewell
case, where it served as a lapdog for the government," Wood says. "Questions
are being asked by the media [such as], 'Why is this information being
leaked about Hatfill?' 'Why is he being called a person of interest?' You
didn't get any of that with Richard Jewell. The media just marched in lockstep
with law enforcement and portrayed him as a bizarre, aberrant individual
who most likely was guilty of bombing Centennial Park."

Indeed, some reporters have exposed
the apparent fragility of the case against Hatfill. The Washington Post's
Susan Schmidt reported that no physical evidence has been found linking
Hatfill to the attacks. "FBI officials say Hatfill is receiving the same
treatment as others they have investigated," Schmidt wrote. "But to date,
they are not known to have subjected others to techniques used in the Hatfill
investigation."

The Weekly Standard's David Tell
cast doubt on several allegations against Hatfill, including claims about
his "racist" past. Hartford Courant reporters Dave Altimari, Jack
Dolan and David Lightman provided context by noting that "Hatfill has bounced
on and off the FBI's ever-changing list of potential suspects for the past
several months. That his house was searched is not that unusual."

And after a Newsweek story reported
that bloodhounds "immediately became agitated" upon approaching Hatfill's
apartment building, the Baltimore Sun's Scott Shane interviewed bloodhound
handlers, who expressed skepticism that a useful scent of the anthrax mailer
could have remained on the letters months after they were sent and decontaminated.

Mark Miller, a Newsweek senior
editor and lead writer on the bloodhound story, says that his reporters
had multiple longtime sources, including those with intimate knowledge
of the investigation. He says the August 12 story attempted to explain
what prompted investigators to obtain a criminal search warrant for Hatfill's
apartment, transforming a cooperative relationship into an adversarial
one. "That's why we led with the bloodhounds," Miller says. "We wanted
to show a sense of these highs and lows with the investigation. They think
they have something, and we point out that once they enter Dr. Hatfill's
house, they find nothing."

The story also characterized Hatfill
as "eccentric" and "arrogant, with a penchant for exaggerating his achievements."
Indeed, the images of a social deviant that irked Wood during the media's
reporting on Jewell also have permeated many stories about Hatfill.

"The judgment falls on reporters
and editors in framing a profile that is fair to the individual," says
Bob Giles, curator at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation and former
editor of the Detroit News. "If you make too much out of what you might
call odd behavior or eccentricities, then you do raise the specter of fairness."

Hatfill's supporters and some
journalists, including The Weekly Standard's Tell, contend that the anthrax
columns by Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times did not meet basic
tests of fairness. Kristof crafted an alarming portrait of a scientist
who had sparked speculation in the bioterror community. Urging the FBI
to "pick up the pace" in the anthrax investigation, Kristof in a May 24
column introduced the scientist, whom he did not name, as a "middle-aged
American who has worked for the United States military bio-defense program
and had access to the labs at Fort Detrick, Md."

In subsequent columns, Kristof
identified this man as "Mr. Z." He wrote that Mr. Z was once "caught with
a girlfriend in a biohazard 'hot suite' at Fort Detrick, surrounded only
by blushing germs." He asked whether the FBI had examined Mr. Z's possible
connections to the anthrax outbreak that sickened more than 10,000 black
farmers in Zimbabwe between 1978 and 1980. He asserted that "[t]here is
evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting
against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in
the white army's much-feared Selous Scouts." He asked investigators whether
they had searched the "isolated residence" that Mr. Z had access to the
previous fall and suggested that property, and many others, may be "safe
houses" operated by American intelligence.

On August 13, two days after Hatfill's
first news conference and more than a month after the scientist's name
had surfaced in the press, Kristof acknowledged that Mr. Z was indeed Hatfill.
Kristof wrote that "[t]here is not a shred of traditional physical evidence
linking him to the attacks," but then asserted, without attribution, that
Hatfill "failed three successive polygraph examinations since January"--a
claim that Hatfill and his defenders vehemently deny.

Hatfill criticized Kristof during
his second news conference in late August. Although the scientist is now
declining interviews on the advice of his lawyers, his representatives
continue to excoriate Kristof and his work.

"Nick Kristof deserves to be horsewhipped,"
says Pat Clawson, a friend of Hatfill's and a spokesman for him. "He has
vilified an American citizen in the pages of the nation's most important
newspaper without any factual proof and without having the decency to contact
that person for any comment.... He makes numerous blanket assertions of
fact without any attribution to sources, and without any attribution, period.
That's a very dangerous thing for a reporter to be doing. Frankly, I'm
just appalled that the New York Times editors didn't review this stuff
prior to publication and ask some serious questions."

New York Times Editorial Page
Editor Gail Collins referred questions to Times spokesman Toby Usnik. In
an e-mail, Usnik wrote, "We are confident that Mr. Kristof has been responsible
and professional in his research and writing.... Each columnist's work
is reviewed before it is published, as was the case with Mr. Kristof's
columns on Dr. Hatfill."

Kristof declines to comment on
Clawson's charges but says he stands by the facts in his columns. He says
he chose the "Mr. Z" designation because his columns focused not on Hatfill
but on "the way the FBI had muffed the investigation, and the way that
the U.S. biodefense establishment had rather recklessly hired people to
work with substances like Ebola. For that, it wasn't necessary to mention
his name."

Kristof says his experiences as
a correspondent in Japan influenced his approach to national security investigations.
After a nerve gas attack in 1994, the Japanese police and press focused
on a victim named Yoshiyuki Kono as the suspect. Kono was later exonerated.
Kristof wrote in a 1995 article that "[f]ew people perhaps have suffered
so unjustly at the hands of journalists." He recalls thinking that Kono's
reputation would have been further shredded in the United States, where
the press corps is more aggressive than its Japanese counterpart and more
inclined to identify a suspect by name.

But Kristof says the Japanese
press treated the real culprit, the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, gently.
"If the press had aggressively covered the accusations of kidnapping and
murder against the sect, made since 1989, then the nerve gas attacks might
have been avoided," Kristof wrote in his 1995 article.

He now characterizes coverage
of national security investigations as an "exceedingly difficult" ethical
dilemma. "There are lots of cases that should leave us remembering that
we're dealing with real people," he says. But, overall, his Japan experiences
taught him that in major national security cases, "the press is best off
investigating, and investigating thoroughly."

While Clawson hones his contempt
on Kristof, he also objects to many other media accounts. "Now we've got
Ashcroft standing up there, pointing a finger at my friend, saying, 'person
of interest,' " Clawson says. "No charges, but 'suspicion.' It's
a rerun of the goddamn 1950s and the McCarthy era. Except now instead of
McCarthyism, we have Ashcroftism. That's the story. And that's the
story that the press corps here is afraid to take on because it requires
some work and it will rumple some feathers."

Clawson contends that Ashcroft
and other federal officials have violated the Code of Federal Regulations,
which specifies what information Justice Department personnel can and can't
release to the news media in criminal and civil cases.

Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for
the Justice Department's criminal division, cited those same federal regulations
and department policy in declining to respond to Clawson's criticisms.
"There is no reason to engage in a dialogue," Sierra says. "It does
not make sense that if you are being criticized for talking too much that
you would respond to that."

The regulations offer reporters
a glimpse into how the Justice Department is supposed to deal with the
press. Knowledge of these regulations can alert reporters to occasions
when federal officials are disseminating information improperly.
According to the regulations, "striking a fair balance" between protecting
individuals accused of crime or involved in civil proceedings and the public's
understanding of controlling crime and administering government "depends
largely on the exercise of sound judgment" by those responsible for enforcing
the law and by the media.

The regulations further state
that Justice Department disclosures should include only factual matters
and not subjective observations. It says department employees should refrain
from disclosing investigative procedures such as polygraph examinations--which
have been cited in Kristof's columns and in other media reports about Hatfill.

In addition, the United States
Attorneys' Manual, posted on the Justice Department Web site (www.usdoj.gov;
click on publications), establishes specific guidelines consistent with
the federal regulations. The manual generally prohibits Justice Department
personnel from responding to questions about the existence of an ongoing
investigation or commenting on its nature or progress.

But it does make exceptions in
matters that "have already received substantial publicity, or about which
the community needs to be reassured that the appropriate law enforcement
agency is investigating the incident, or where release of information is
necessary to protect the public interest, safety, or welfare."

The manual reiterates the federal
regulations' assertion that Justice Department personnel should avoid referring
to investigating procedures, such as fingerprints, polygraphs and ballistic
tests, and should not disclose a defendant's refusal to submit to such
tests. Nor should department personnel provide advance information to the
media about the execution of a search warrant or arrest warrant.

Once a criminal suspect is charged,
the guidelines specify that Justice Department employees may publicize
information such as the substance of the charge, the circumstances surrounding
the arrest, the length and scope of the investigation, and the defendant's
name, age, residence, employment, marital status and similar background
information.

Juliette Kayyem, a Justice Department
attorney from 1995 to 1999 and a counterterrorism expert at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government, says the most disastrous cases during Janet
Reno's tenure as attorney general in the Clinton administration were those
investigated in public--the cases that ensnared Jewell and Wen Ho Lee.

Kayyem, who served as a legal
adviser to Reno and as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil
rights, urged Ashcroft to learn from his predecessor and turn off the microphones
as his department investigates the anthrax mailings and other post-September
11 cases. "Since embarking on their antiterrorism mission, Ashcroft and
his deputies have displayed a misplaced sense of secrecy," Kayyem wrote
in a July opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor. "They are loud
during the investigation (when information should be kept quiet) and remarkably
secret after they have acted (when constitutional and due-process norms
suggest that the public has a right to know)."

As government officials leak or
dribble information regarding their investigations and actions, experts
warn reporters to treat disclosures with caution. Aly Colón, a member
of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, recommends using anonymous
sources sparingly--only when there is no other way to obtain the information
and the information is valuable to the public.

Colón cautions reporters
to make sure they fully understand the situation they're describing. "One
of our first questions that we advise people to ask here at Poynter is,
'What do I know, and what do I need to know?' " Colón says.

That includes putting disclosures
into context. If investigators are searching the home of one "person of
interest," did they also search the homes of other persons of interest?
Did the bloodhounds' agitation necessarily indicate Hatfill's guilt, or
might they have displayed such behavior for a reason entirely unrelated
to anthrax?

"Reporters need to remember that
when they're dealing with law enforcement officials, those investigators
have a purpose, which is to solve the crime," adds Giles of the Nieman
Foundation. "They're not particularly interested in journalistic fairness.
They're interested in prosecuting a suspect."

Matthew Felling, media director
at the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., warns that
exclusives in high-profile investigations often carry consequences. "Journalists
might unwittingly become a participant in the investigation, which is not
the journalist's role, and they should be wary of exclusives given to them,"
Felling says.

And clarity of language is critical.
On television broadcasts and in print, reporters have repeated the government's
assertion that Hatfill is not a "suspect"; rather, he is one of 20 or 30
"persons of interest." But what exactly does that mean?

Justice Department spokesman Sierra
says he cannot discuss the Hatfill investigation, but he does offer insight
into the meaning of the phrase "person of interest." Though used infrequently,
the phrase is not new to the anthrax investigation.

"Generally, there may be an effort
to use that term to deemphasize the media's description of a person as
a suspect or target if we feel that is inaccurate," Sierra says. No textbook
definition of "person of interest" exists, and the phrase has no legal
standing. Still, Sierra says it can help clarify that a person is not a
suspect or target. "A lawyer doesn't deal with the same uses of language
that reporters and spokespeople do," he says. "Part of the difficulty is
the press and prosecutors have different terms."

Imprecise language can carry unforeseen
connotations. Hatfill and his supporters clearly don't consider the phrase
"person of interest" a benign attempt to soften the focus on him. Rather,
they see it as a sinister effort to cast him as the anthrax killer without
actually charging him.

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S.
attorney in Washington, D.C., says labeling someone a "person of interest"
is "such malarkey that it's ludicrous," while Wood, Jewell's attorney,
calls Ashcroft's use of the phrase an act of "absolute irresponsibility.
When the attorney general of the United States calls you a person of interest
in connection with the FBI and terrorist attacks, life as you know it is
basically over."

The Baltimore Sun's Shane, perplexed
by the term "person of interest," tried to offer readers a more meaningful
description. He opted to say that Hatfill was "under scrutiny," which he
clearly was.

Wood prefers that law enforcement
officers refrain from stating that a private individual is under investigation.
But if intense media attention compels officials to speak, Wood urges a
"simple and honest" answer designed to inflict the least amount of damage.
He suggests government officials acknowledge that a person is under investigation,
state why they're under investigation, and remind the public that nothing
should be inferred from that because it's standard procedure to check out
people in certain situations.

"Person of interest" is just one
of several nebulous terms that have gained prevalence since the terrorist
attacks and raise questions of fair reporting during national security
investigations. The Justice Department has designated two Americans, Jose
Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, as "enemy combatants." By calling detainees enemy
combatants, federal authorities have declared they may be held without
access to courts or attorneys.

But a September report by the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights objected to that designation. "The administration
has in fact been using the term 'unlawful enemy combatant'--a term not
found in international law--as a kind of magic wand, waving it to avoid
well-established standards of U.S. and international law," the report declared.

Hamdi, a Louisiana-born U.S. citizen
of Saudi lineage, was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan
and transferred to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where officials
discovered his citizenship. As a result, he was moved to a military base
in Virginia, where he is being held, without charge or trial, as an enemy
combatant.

The first press references to
Hamdi came in early April, when he was flown to Norfolk. But coverage of
the unfolding legal battle over his classification as an "enemy combatant"
has predominantly played out in major papers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Despite the high-stakes
legal battle and its implications for the rights of U.S. citizens, most
papers have largely ignored Hamdi's plight.

In stark contrast, Ashcroft's
announcement of Padilla's capture was splashed across front pages and broadcast
prominently everywhere. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born U.S. citizen, was arrested
in Chicago on May 8 and initially held as a material witness in connection
with an alleged conspiracy to create and use a radioactive "dirty bomb."
One month later, he was transferred to military custody in South Carolina
as an enemy combatant and denied further access to his attorneys.

Ashcroft opted to make a televised
June 10 announcement about Padilla from Moscow. As the Washington Post
later described it, "Peering grimly into a Russian camera and bathed in
an eerie red glow, Ashcroft broke away from meetings in Moscow to announce
that the United States had 'disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot' that
could have caused 'mass death and injury.' "

On June 12, a front-page USA Today
story headlined "Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened" reported that Ashcroft
had overstated the potential threat. "Ashcroft's remarks annoyed the White
House and led the administration to soften the government's descriptions
of the alleged plot," Kevin Johnson and Toni Locy wrote. The Washington
Post followed on June 13 with another story questioning whether Ashcroft's
remarks were "unduly alarmist" and quoted an unnamed senior administration
official as saying, "We work very hard to inform yet not alarm." The official
added that the story "became a lot bigger than any of us thought it would."

But many initial press accounts
seemed to assume the veracity of Ashcroft's statements. Some reports asserted
the administration had designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" without
explaining the unusual use of the phrase or questioning why and how Padilla
acquired such a designation.

"One of the things that always
has worried me is how much we, being journalists, tend to assume the FBI,
or the DEA, or local law enforcement people are right and that they indeed
have captured the guilty party," says Joann Byrd, editorial page editor
at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and chair of the American Society of
Newspaper Editors' ethics and values committee. When Ashcroft announces
that law officers have averted a tragedy, obviously journalists need to
report that. But simultaneously, Byrd says, they should try to assess
the authorities' version of events.

One way journalists can hold agencies
accountable is to challenge their use of language and to avoid using jargon
or shorthand. Law enforcement officials have detained others in the United
States suspected of "links" to terrorism, a claim repeated in newspapers
and on television.

Federal authorities arresting
members of a suspected al Qaeda "sleeper" cell in suburban Buffalo said
they were investigating whether the cell had "links" to similar groups
of alleged sleeper terrorists arrested in Detroit and Seattle.

But "links" can connote varying
degrees of guilt or innocence. Harvard's Kayyem says reporters should more
aggressively press federal authorities to explain these so-called "links"
to terrorism, al Qaeda and Islamic radical groups.

"What's incumbent on reporters,
and what has gotten me frustrated, is they don't follow up that issue of
links," Kayyem says. "What is that link? Not only is 'links' not a legal
standard, I don't think it should be a media standard."

In the anthrax investigation and
in other post-9/11 probes, the federal government is forcing journalists
into the uncomfortable position of seeming to serve as advocates for those
who may seek to harm Americans. But now, even more than during the investigations
of Richard Jewell and Wen Ho Lee, fears about Americans' civil rights have
cast journalists not only as dispensers of information, but also as defenders
of the Constitution.

As professor Ted Gup wrote in
a Washington Post Outlook piece, "It is not just Hatfill who is entitled
to a higher standard of prosecutorial or journalistic conduct than we have
seen in the past few weeks. We all are. Each slipshod case whittles away
our collective liberties, our self-respect, our confidence in the legal
system. The press, too, is at risk--its credibility in jeopardy, its independence
on trial, its privileged position under the First Amendment left exposed."

Another after-the-fact public
accounting could come too late to protect the reputations of innocent Americans,
too late to preserve the integrity of the legal system, too late to prove
the media's impartiality.

But some observers predict that
journalists covering the anthrax investigation will feel compelled to amend
their alarmist tones and ominous implications. Says Kayyem, "If it's not
Hatfill, they're going to be doing another mea culpa like they did after
Wen Ho Lee."

THE NATION

FBI
Laments Lack of Anthrax Arrests

From ReutersNovember 2 2002

WASHINGTON -- FBI Director Robert
S. Mueller III expressed dissatisfaction Friday that those responsible
for last year's deadly anthrax attacks had not yet been caught, saying
scientific analysis of the anthrax spores had been difficult.

"Am I satisfied? No, because we
don't have the person or persons responsible identified, and charges being
brought against them," he said when asked about the FBI's investigation
into the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people.

"Are we making progress? Yes.
And we continue to make progress. We continue to have a number of individuals
that we are looking at," he told a news briefing. The letters were sent
to two U.S. senators and to the news media.

"We are looking at the scientific
analysis of the anthrax and replicating the ways, or possible way or ways,
in which it might have been manufactured," Mueller said.

"But it is not a process that
is easily accomplished," he said, explaining that scientists are undertaking
analyses that have never been done before to get information that might
help find the source of the anthrax, who manufactured it and those capable
of obtaining and making it.

"We're looking at the DNA of the
analysis. We're looking at the chemical breakdown of the anthrax. We're
replicating the manufacture of the anthrax," Mueller said.

"There are ... different scientific
studies that are ongoing to give us all of the information available in
the scientific community on the anthrax," he said.

"We are going into new territory
in some areas," Mueller said.

And the FBI only has a limited
amount of anthrax to analyze, he said.

In November 2001, the FBI released
a possible profile of the anthrax mailer, saying a man in the U.S. most
likely sent the letters and that he was probably a loner with a scientific
background.

Mueller said the FBI had not updated
its profile, but that did not mean the agency had excluded other possibilities.

"We have never ruled out any scenario,
and to the extent that there are leads that come up, whether it be to individuals
or methods of manufacturing or what have you, we pursue them," Mueller
said. "No possibility has been ruled out."

Nov. 4,
2002, 8:44PM

What's
Online

By CAY DICKSON Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

ANTHRAX APATHY -- Remember the
letters with anthrax in them that were sent out shortly after Sept. 11,
2001? Five people were killed and numerous others became ill as a result
of coming into contact with the deadly spores. One man, Ed Lake, decided
to investigate the events and gather as much information as he could. You
can see the results of his efforts in the Anthrax Cases, at www.anthraxinvestigation.com.
He has photographs of the letters and the envelopes that clearly show the
handwriting on both. He pores over the intricate details of handwriting
analysis, postmark possibilities, anagrams in the return addresses and
the actual words used in the letters to arrive at his various theories.

Thursday,
7 November, 2002, 17:56 GMT Plague
scare in New York

Two tourists visiting New York
City have been hospitalised after developing symptoms consistent with the
potentially fatal bubonic plague.

If confirmed, they would be the
first cases of the disease in New York state for more than a century, officials
said.

The couple, a 53-year-old man
and his 47-year-old wife, arrived in the city from the southwestern state
of New Mexico on Friday and were hospitalised on Tuesday after complaining
of flu-like symptoms, including fever and swollen lymph nodes.

Preliminary tests on the man later
indicated he had tested positive for bubonic plague, while results for
his wife are still being awaited.

Both are being treated with antibiotics,
but the man is described as being in a critical condition, while his wife
is said to be stable.

'No risk'

The bubonic plague occurs in around
10-20 people in the US every year and is considered active in up to 15
states.

The disease is rarely spread through
person-to-person contact, instead being passed through infected rodents
and fleas.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden
said that rodents in the couple's New Mexico home had tested positive for
plague.

Following the anthrax attacks
in the US last October, there were fears that terrorists may use biological
agents such as bubonic plague against the country's population.

But Mr Frieden stressed that there
was no cause for concern among the city's eight million population.

"There is no risk to New Yorkers
from the two individuals being evaluated for bubonic plague," he said.

"There is a lot of plague in New
Mexico from year to year."

Deadly disease

Bubonic plague, sometimes known
as the infamous Black Death, is thought to have caused the deaths of up
to 200 million people globally in the past 1,500 years.

In the 14th century alone, around
23 million people are thought to have died after the disease ravaged much
of Asia and Europe.

Globally the disease still affects
between 1,000 to 3,000 people a year, the US Center for Disease Control
and Prevention says on its website.

Friday,
8 November, 2002, 16:08 GMT Nasa
pulls Moon hoax book

By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor

The US space agency (Nasa) has
cancelled the book intended to challenge the conspiracy theorists who claim
the Moon landings were a hoax.

Nasa declined to comment specifically
on the reasons for dropping the publication, but it is understood the decision
resulted from the bad publicity that followed the announcement of the project.

Criticism that Nasa was displaying
poor judgement and a lack of confidence in commissioning the book caused
it to abort the project, agency spokesman Bob Jacobs said.

Nasa had hired aerospace writer
Jim Oberg for the job on a fee of $15,000.

He says he will still do the work,
although it will now be an unofficial publication with alternative funding.

The book will deliver a point-by-point
rebuttal of the theory that the Apollo landings were faked in a movie studio,
to convince the world that the US had beaten the Soviets to the Moon.

It will explain why in still and
video footage of the landings, no stars can be seen in the Moon sky, why
a flag appears to ripple on the atmosphere-free satellite and why shadows
fall in strange directions - all "facts", conspiracy theorists say, point
to a hoax.

Some commentators had said that
in making the Oberg book an official Nasa publication, the agency was actually
giving a certain credibility to the hoax theory.

FBI
science experiment could help anthrax investigation

By Mike Nartker, Global Security
Newswire November 11, 2002

The FBI’s attempts to recreate
the spores used in last year’s anthrax attacks could provide valuable clues
and help the bureau focus its investigation, experts told Global Security
Newswire last week.

The bureau has been working for
months to reconstruct the spores, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Nov.
1, according to The Washington Post. “We’re replicating the way or ways
it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task,” the Post quoted
Mueller as saying. “We are going into new territory in some areas,” he
added.

Several experts agreed that this
new tactic in the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation could provide information
needed to better determine who might be a possible suspect. By knowing
how the spores were produced, the FBI might be able to determine how many
people were needed and whether sophisticated materials and equipment were
acquired and used, said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biologist at State University
of New York who has often publicized her views on the anthrax investigation.

With the information learned through
the experiments, the FBI will also be able to better educate its field
agents, improving their abilities to investigate sites and conduct interviews,
said Martin Hugh-Jones, an anthrax researcher at Louisiana State University.
It is “a very sensible decision,” Hugh-Jones said in a written response
to questions from GSN.

Charles Pena, a senior defense
policy analyst at the CATO Institute in Washington, agreed that the experiments
should enable FBI investigators to learn what kind of technical expertise
was needed to produce the spores.

The FBI should be able to determine
whether the spores were made by “an individual in their basement” or if
the spores were more sophisticated—something “you need more than high school
chemistry, high school biology” to produce, Pena said.

The bureau might also be able
to learn whether specialized equipment was needed—and what kind—which could
then be used to determine where such equipment could be obtained and by
whom, Pena said. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you can go down to K-Mart
and get,” he added.

No Solid Leads

The FBI’s decision to attempt
to recreate the spores might also be a sign that investigators lack other
concrete evidence, Pena said. The bureau’s decision reflects the fact that
it does not have any solid leads in the case, and instead is choosing to
go back to fundamentals, he said, suggesting that this is a tactic the
FBI should have considered earlier.

Pena also criticized the FBI’s
apparent decision to base its investigation on a profile that a lone U.S.
scientist is responsible for the attacks. In a large-scale investigation,
officials tend to follow their initial assumptions, Pena said, adding that
it is often difficult to shift an investigation away from those initial
assumptions.

The FBI might now be asking, “If
we start from zero, where would we go?” Pena said.

Research into how the anthrax
spores were produced might help dissuade the bureau away from the lone
U.S. scientist profile, said Richard Spertzel, chief biological inspector
for the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq from 1994 to 1998.

“If it gets them [the FBI] off
the kick that it can be easily and cheaply made, it will be helpful,” Spertzel
said in a written response to GSN.

The FBI’s acknowledged months
of research into recreating the spores should be an indication that they
were probably difficult to produce, Spertzel said. He added that this high
level of difficulty should also convince the bureau to shift the focus
of its investigation away from Steven Hatfill, the former U.S. Army biologist
who has been the public focus of the FBI investigation.

If the FBI were to determine through
its research that the spores were coated with a silica compound and created
with the use of a spray dryer—expensive and specialized equipment—it might
narrow the field of suspects toward a state-run program such as Iraq, Spertzel
said.

BWC

While the FBI has not publicly
provided technical details of its anthrax-manufacturing research, such
as whether it is using or producing live anthrax, experts agreed that the
work probably does not violate the Biological Weapons Convention. The convention
prohibits signatories from producing biological weapons agents except in
small quantities for defensive purposes.

Attempt to reverse-engineer the
spores would not violate the BWC as long as the quantities of anthrax used
are small, Spertzel said.

“Such ‘small quantities’ are acceptable
for defensive purposes and investigating a crime would certainly fall into
that category,” he said in a written response to questions from GSN.

The FBI might not even need to
use actual anthrax in its research, Rosenberg said, noting that simulants
would probably be as effective. If the FBI is using live anthrax, however,
it should explain the necessity for doing so, she said.

“I don’t see any point in secrecy
on this,” Rosenberg said in a written response to GSN. “It just adds to
doubts about [the FBI’s] competence in pursuing this case,” she added.

EDITORIAL
- The Los Angeles TimesBeef
Up the BiotreatyU.S. opposition
to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention defies logic in a time
of increasing threats.

November 12 2002

You'd think the U.S. would be
eager to embrace the goal of a summit on biological weapons that convened
Monday in Geneva: to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, a treaty
drafted in 1972 and since ratified by 146 nations, including this one,
to ban the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons.
Improvement certainly is needed; after all, as Undersecretary of State
for Arms Control John Bolton has pointed out, the treaty, though well-intentioned,
is toothless, lacking any mechanism to verify compliance.

The impotence of the treaty is
alarming because the threat posed by biological weapons, widely recognized
since the anthrax attacks, has been growing. For instance, new biotechnologies
have made it easy for scientists in hostile nations like North Korea and
Iraq to turn harmless microbes into deadly biological agents that are impossible
to counter with existing drugs.

Far from cheering on the summit,
however, Bolton seems bent on subverting it. Last week, he urged summit
leaders to stick to enforcing the existing treaty. He cautioned that Washington
would oppose adding any stringent enforcement measures, such as an international
system of independent lab inspectors who could travel at a moment's notice
to suspect nations like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan and Syria,
as well as to the United States, Britain and other treaty signatories.

The Bush administration objects
to such measures because it fears they could compromise national security.
It worries that the international lab inspectors might, on a visit to a
private drug company or military lab in the United States, pick up commercial
or military secrets.

But merely rubber-stamping the
current weak treaty would be a big mistake. Here is a key reason: One of
its many provisions supposedly bans the development of toxins like smallpox
but permits research for "peaceful purposes," thus allowing dictators like
Saddam Hussein to use defense "research" as a smokescreen for developing
biological weapons to launch a biological attack.

The leader of the summit, Hungary's
Tibor Toth, should address the Bush administration's legitimate concerns
about national security. Specifically, he should propose that inspectors
meet with private-sector and military officials to work out compromises
on a case-by-case basis. But Toth should not accede to the administration's
request that fundamental improvements to the treaty be delayed until 2006,
the treaty's original "review" time.

Inspections, and the Biological
Weapons Convention, are far from perfect. But however flawed, they remain
our best hope of countering the growing bioweapons threat.

Posted
on Tue, Nov. 12, 2002

Study:
Low-level anthrax exposure not as dangerous

By SETH BORENSTEINKnight Ridder Newspapers

DENVER - Anthrax from a tainted
letter sent to Congress last year got into far more people than originally
suspected, but it wasn't enough to make them sick, according to a newly
released study by the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center.

That means that at low levels
of exposure, anthrax may not be as dangerous as was believed during last
year's scare.

Because anthrax is so rare, researchers
haven't had many studies to tell them what levels are safe. While this
study is small and preliminary, it offers hope that the bioweapon isn't
as devastating as once feared.

On Oct. 15, 2001, an anthrax-laced
letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was opened at his quarters in
the Hart Senate Office Building. Subsequent analysis found that it was
highly potent and professionally milled. Some 28 people tested positive
for exposure and were treated with antibiotics. The letter's sender has
not been found.

Now a first-of-its-kind study
of immune-system responses to anthrax found that the bacteria did affect
people nearby - who originally weren't thought to be exposed - in a small,
cell-level way.

The Navy study of 20 people found
immune-system reactions in about one-quarter of them. These people were
congressional workers who weren't in the high-exposure zone - Daschle's
office and the one next door. Some were even in other buildings. The study
was released this week at an American Society of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene conference in Denver.

Earlier tests had shown that those
people had not developed antibodies to anthrax, but the new tests revealed
that their white blood cells had changed to fight the bacteria, said Dr.
Denise Doolan of the Naval Medical Research Center.

That means they inhaled anthrax.
But the impact of the anthrax was far less than feared.

So the dispersal zone from the
biological weapon was far wider than initially recognized, but its bite
was less deadly than feared.

None of the people in the study
got sick. They didn't show symptoms, and most inhaled such small amounts
of anthrax spores that they were not harmed, said Dr. Daniel Freilich of
the Navy's Biological Defense Research Directorate.

This research correlates with
studies that found small amounts of anthrax spores in congressional office
buildings other than Hart. Presumably the spores had traveled through ventilation
systems, Freilich said.

These conclusions jibe with research
from the 1960s and 1970s on wool workers who showed levels of anthrax bacteria
in their bodies but no ill effects, said Dr. Edward Ryan, a top infectious-disease
specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The Navy's research also found
that victims of the anthrax letter - even those who didn't show symptoms
but had immune-system reactions - benefited greatly from getting the anthrax
vaccine, Freilich said.

14 November
2002Tooele (Utah) Transcript Bulletin

Anthrax
use questioned in Dugway investigation

by Michael RigertStaff Writer

After the FBI revealed that it
was attempting to "reverse engineer" the anthrax at Dugway Proving Ground
used in last fall's fatal postal attacks, a Salt Lake-based public awareness
group is questioning the wisdom of conducting the tests at Dugway and if
live anthrax spores are being used in the experiments.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said
a week ago that the investigators and scientists were conducting tests
to weaponize anthrax in order to discover what resources and capabilities
the perpetrator who committed the crime would have required. The hope is
that Dugway tests might provide investigators with a short list of potential
suspects in a case that has yielded few solid leads.

Steve Erickson, director of the
Citizens Education Project, sent a letter to Dugway commander Col. Gary
Harter Wednesday posing specific questions about the FBI anthrax testing
and the extent of Dugway's safety procedures regarding the experiments.

The letter asks Harter if Dugway
is using anthrax simulants, harmless spores which are designed to react
the same to stimuli as the actual pathogen, or if scientists are using
"killed, attenuated or live anthrax spores."

Erickson and his organization
also want to know whether the anthrax is being aersolized, how much has
been produced, and if other deadly pathogens have also been weaponized
as part of the FBI's investigation or continuing Dugway biodefense research.

The group questions why the government
has chosen to do the testing at Dugway when the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick
facility in Maryland may be better suited for the tests.

"Why is Dugway performing this
joint investigative work rather than other facilities such as Fort Detrick,
which has similar capabilities and higher-rated containment laboratories
(e.g. BSL 4), and is closer to both FBI headquarters and the focus of the
criminal investigation," queries the Utah watchdog group in its brief to
Harter.

Erickson also asks the Dugway
commander whether local regulatory and health authorities have received
information regarding the testing and if they are adequately prepared to
respond to any accidental exposures to investigating personnel.

"Our primary concerns remain the
public health and safety, and the transparency necessary to assure it,"
he states in the letter.

Paula Nicholson, Dugway's spokeswoman,
said Harter has received Erickson's letter, and that any response would
be available to the media pending the Citizens Education Project director's
approval. She could not say whether or not Harter would be able to answer
specific questions in the letter.

Erickson is not overly optimistic
about the prospects of the Dugway commander's reply."It will be interesting to see
what kind of response we get, if any," Erickson said.

The terrorist attacks sent in
the form of mailed letters in October 2001 in New York City and Washington,
D.C. left five people dead and infected 13 others.E-mail: mrigert@tooeletranscript.com

Brigid Glanville: Travelling and
working in America, there is a palpable sense of anxiety. There’s the constant
fear of more terrorism, everywhere you go there are extraordinary security
measures. There were the Washington snipers who have now been caught, and
there’s the ever-present fear of some kind of biological warfare.

On top of it all there’s still
the mystery of who sent out the anthrax letters that killed five, and made
many more gravely ill. There was enough anthrax loose in America at one
stage to potentially kill 20 million people.

Hallo, I’m Brigid Glanville, and
while in America, it was the anthrax story that I followed for Background
Briefing.

siren

Brigid Glanville: It’s now more
than year since the anthrax letters were sent out, and though one, ‘person
of interest’ has been named, Steven Hatfill, there have been no arrests.

The FBI says all State and local
police and authorities are helping them, but there’s very little hard information.
There are several websites devoted to the anthrax story, and dozens of
conspiracy theories, from the wacky to the just possible. Many believe
the perpetrator is someone so high up in government defence circles, that
it is too embarrassing for the Administration to expose them, because it
may also expose the fact that America has been working on bio-offence.
Or, some say, the motive was to reveal to the government the need for money
for research in case of an attack from elsewhere. Or to get America to
sign the Biological Weapons Convention at the meeting this month.

The FBI has come in for an extraordinary
amount of criticism for poor handling of the case.

A strong critic of the FBI, Pat
Clawson:

Pat Clawson: The FBI investigations
obviously have been botched right from the beginning. I was really stunned.
I was sitting in our news room here in Washington, watching the live televised
news conference from Florida with the Head of the FBI office in Miami.
The day after Steve Hatfill did his last press conference, the FBI held
a press conference to announce they were going back into the offices of
the National Inquirer newspaper in Florida, where the first anthrax attack
was reported. And I about fell off my chair when I heard the head of the
FBI office in Florida say they had never conducted a full crime scene search
at the National Inquirer offices. Here we are, almost a year after the
anthrax attacks, and the FBI had never conducted a full crime scene search.
Now let me put this into perspective for your listeners. You’ve got a bank
sitting on a corner. A robber goes into the bank and shoots the teller
in the head and flees the bank. The FBI pulls up to the scene, they run
into the bank, they pull out the dead teller, they put up the yellow crime
scene tape around the bank, and then they leave for a year. That’s what
happened here in the anthrax cases. They left for a year! It’s unbelievable,
the lousy police work that’s been done in this case.

Brigid Glanville: Pat Clawson
is the spokesman for Steven Hatfill, the FBI’s named person of interest.
The FBI has never granted any interviews about the anthrax attacks, but
did agree to talk exclusively to Background Briefing. We asked why they
hadn’t taken more care over the National Inquirer newspaper office. They
said they did do a full crime scene search in August this year. But the
point remains, that was nearly 12 months after the anthrax letters first
arrived there.

The FBI headquarters in Washington,
D.C., is an old building but just as large and grand as many other buildings
in America’s capital. There are American flags everywhere in the grounds,
and at the main gates you’re confronted by six policemen in what looks
like full riot gear, standing to attention.

On the driveway there are concrete
barricades and spikes to make sure no vehicle can do a quick dash in or
out.

Being escorted down the echoing,
cold corridors was an eerie feeling, like entering one of those huge old-fashioned
hospitals. We went through five checkpoints before I was showed into the
office of FBI Domestic Terrorism Chief, Tom Carey. His section is part
of the Counter-Terrorism Division. There’s been very little hard evidence
on the anthrax issue, says Tom Carey.

Tom Carey: What we do have and
what we do know is that the anthrax was mailed here in the United States;
we know it was mailed from 10 Nassar Street, Princeton, New Jersey, from
a mailbox. We know the flow of the mail flow, we know the dates that the
letters were sent, and it would appear to many of us that have worked this
investigation, that it’s much more consistent with someone being an American-born,
and having some level of familiarity with the Princeton-[Trenton] New Jersey
area versus a foreign operative coming into the US and being able to successfully
conduct such an attack.

Brigid Glanville: One of the major
criticisms of the FBI, apart from its lack of progress on the case, has
been that there seem to have been an extraordinary number of strange leaks
coming from the organisation, including a leak that named Steven Hatfill
as a person of interest, leading to a media frenzy about his role.

Tom Carey was not happy answering
Background Briefing’s questions about the leaks.

Tom Carey: You’d have to talk
to the person who leaked that information. I’m not aware of that in terms
of who leaked it. I would say it’s unlikely it was somebody from the government,
we have nothing to gain by that. We like to keep our investigations discreet,
but we have seen more than one instance where we have gone out to places
and within minutes there is a news chopper overhead, or news reporters
at the scene, so we are as frustrated by it as people that may be potentially
persons of interest, and that are being looked at.

Brigid Glanville: Given that there
was a leak then, and Hatfill has become a target, why didn’t the FBI release
the names of other people as a person of interest?

Tom Carey: Well again, that’s
an investigative technique and we’re are not going to let the world know
who we’re looking at and why we’re looking at them, because all that is
going to do is cause problems for our investigation down the road. He has
been, he is the one that’s held all the press conferences. The FBI
has not made comments on it, and you can’t control what people say and
do with the media, and again there’s a lot of speculation there, there’s
a lot of so-called leaks, and I attribute a lot of this to people that
are misinformed, but they may have partial information but their information
at the end of the day is ultimately incorrect.

Brigid Glanville: The media have
raked over every tall tale and true about the anthrax mystery, and there
have been very different positions taken on who might have done it, not
only among journalists, but among scientists, defence and terrorism academics,
and the various police and intelligence services.

In September, the most prestigious
journalism school in the world, The Columbia School of Journalism in New
York, organised a special Breakfast Forum on what was going on.

The lack of information and the
FBI’s refusal to talk to anybody about the case, has raised questions amongst
the media and science community about a cover-up about who sent the letters.
Most of the speakers agreed that the politics of the case are probably
clouding the investigation, and that could be why the FBI are so secretive
about it all.

Top reporters talked about how
tough it has been to get hard information; others talked of disinformation
and poor journalism.

Speaking at the Forum, from The
Baltimore Sun newspaper, Scott Shane.

Scott Shane: There have been major
erroneous stories, even apart from Hatfill. For example, it was reported
by major publications and networks quite definitively that the anthrax
powder in the envelopes contained bentonite and that pointed the finger
at Iraq. This is going back a ways, now everyone’s focused on Stephen Hatfill,
no-one remembers Iraq, but for a while there, Iraq was the culprit and
the proof was bentonite and then the guy who was then head of the army’s
Biodefence Centre in Frederick at Fort Detrick came out and said that the
samples didn’t have aluminium in them and therefore it couldn’t have bentonite,
and that story died. Another example was a major network led the evening
news one day in December by saying the FBI had identified a leading suspect
and the suggestion was they were about to put the cuffs on him. And that
too was wrong and disappeared pretty much without a trace.

Brigid Glanville: Scott Shane
echoed the opinion of many of the other journalists when he said that the
poor media on the story came about because when it first happened, there
were many journalists who had no real understanding of anthrax.

Scott Shane: The combination of
intense competition on a huge national story, a very unfamiliar topic,
you know there were a lot of people posing as anthrax experts early on
who some of us found didn’t know all that much about anthrax, and why would
they, you know who knows that much about anthrax? So maybe that was
the fatal combination, a topic that was unfamiliar to many supposed experts
combined with intense pressure of a very competitive national story.

Brigid Glanville: At the Columbia
School of Journalism forum, one of the things that was discussed was the
lack of hard evidence available.

The FBI says the letters containing
anthrax spores sent to various newspapers, and some politicians, are all
they’ve got.

On its way through the postal
system, the anthrax spilling out of these letters killed several people,
including postal workers, and made many others sick.

The letters, which can be seen
on the Background Briefing website, hold several clues that are fascinating.
It is now accepted that someone in America was trying to disguise himself
by making the letters sound as if they were written by a Muslim in the
wake of the September 11 attacks. Here’s a reading from one of the letters.

Take penicillin now. Death to
America. Death to Israel. Allah is great.

Brigid Glanville: It’s believed
after these initial letters were sent to the media, the perpetrator sent
more, even stronger anthrax to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
Those letters read:

You cannot stop us. We have anthrax.
You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah
is great.

Brigid Glanville: It’s believed
the letters sent to the Senators had a different motive to the earlier
ones. Not only was the anthrax much more refined and pure, but there was
enough of it to kill 20-million people.

Quick action and a shut-down of
many government buildings prevented any more victims of inhalation anthrax.

One of the biggest anthrax sites
in the web is run by Ed Lake. There’s about 300 articles there, with a
timeline, and copies of all the evidence so far available. Ed Lake also
says the letters hold the key, and they point to the perpetrator being
in New Jersey.

Ed Lake: There are a lot of laboratories
in central New Jersey where it could have been done. I think when he finished
making the anthrax he wouldn’t have wanted to carry it very far, so he
mailed them probably within 50 or 60 miles of his home. The return address
on the envelope was a combination of things regarding central New Jersey,
it was a good central New Jersey zipcode, there was a central New Jersey
city, there was a school that can be interpreted, instead of Greendale
you get Greenbrook, and you get a school in central New Jersey. There’s
a lot of things about central New Jersey that implies that he lives there
and knows it very well.

Brigid Glanville: Internet experts
of various kinds have also been taking special interest in the case, because
of an unusual nine-digit zipcode number.

Brigid Glanville: The man who
uncovered the people who created the Melissa and I Love You viruses a few
years ago, Richard Smith, says the zipcode in theory narrows down the possible
anthrax case suspects.

Richard Smith: When you look at
the two addresses first, which is two of the letters were sent to Senators
here in the United States, Senator Daschle and Senator Leahy, and you look
at the addresses and they’re very well done. There’s a particular way that
Senators get addressed and mail sent to them, and the perpetrator had used
a very specific format for the address and the code, which is United States
zipcode, so let’s say it’s a postal code. And the 9-digit zipcode is fairly
unusual, most people still use the older 5-digit form. And what that shows
is he, the perpetrator, had copies the address from some kind of directory.
And so my interest was to find what directory that was, whether it was
a printed directory or if it was gotten from the internet, and that’s sort
of an obvious place nowadays for people to get addresses, is from the internet.
And had he got it from the internet then he would be traceable by some
of the tracks he left at the website, or wherever he got the address from.

Brigid Glanville: Any good mystery
or set of coincidences spawns a myriad of conspiracy theories, and the
anthrax mystery is a natural. There are enough kooks and loonies on the
web to dream up almost anything. Some of the conspiracies are that it was
done by one of the big pharmaceutical companies who would then make a lot
of money selling medications and vaccines. Another is that a local politician
did it, for whatever reason, or even that the CIA did it in order to scare
people and raise even more fear of people from the Middle East. But the
Islamic connection was so poorly made, no-one takes it seriously now. There’s
also the bitter ex-wife theory, but two theories recur time and again.

Ed Lake: The two main theories
that are on the internet are that Dr Hatfill did it, or al Qaeda did it.
The one that isn’t on the internet that much is that it was done by some
right-wing group. You don’t see much in the way of websites about that,
but it seems to be what the public seems to believe. There seem to be individuals
with wacko theories; they’ll look at some local politician and think that
he did it or somebody they met, and I’ve encountered people who think they
were followed by Dr Hatfill in a uniform, things like that. But basically
it boils down to two theories: Al Qaeda and Dr Hatfill.

Brigid Glanville: But the most
plausible theories are money or politics. Or perhaps money and politics.
The strain of anthrax used in the letters is now proven to be the Ames
strain, and that strain is only found in a small number of laboratories
in America. But the most likely is that it came from Fort Detrick, the
US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, USAMRID.

Fort Detrick, though cloaked in
tight security and secrecy, is well known as having been researching biochemical
diseases and weapons for decades.

Chairman of the Federation of
American Scientists Working Group on Biological Weapons is Professor Barbara
Hatch Rosenberg.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: I suppose
I was the first one to point out rather clearly, at least the first person
outside government, that the attack was almost certainly come out of the
US biodefence program. I think that the US government has supported that
position from way back, because in less than two weeks after the attacks
were recognised, US officials began saying that the attacks were probably
domestic and they’ve never strayed from that as the most probable interpretation.
I agree with them, I think that the evidence of the anthrax itself points
in that direction, and since then a great deal more evidence has accumulated
to support that premise.

Brigid Glanville: Who do you think
did it?

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: I am
not in any position to mention specific names because I have no absolute
evidence for any specific person as the perpetrator, but I do know that
the number of people in the biodefence program who had the expertise and
the access to carry out that attack was quite small, and I know this from
people in the program who know all the people who could have done it, and
who have given names to the FBI way back in the beginning, and I think
the agreement is that the number is certainly under 100 and more likely
around the 20 to 30 mark for those who really, there’s reason to suspect.

Brigid Glanville: The Ames strain
comes in many different strengths after it’s been what’s called ‘weaponised’,
that is, made into a state where it can be easily breathed in. You need
about 50,000 spores to kill one person.

The anthrax letters sent to Senator
Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy had about 1-trillion spores per gram and
there were 2-grams in the letters. That means potentially 20-million people
could have been killed.

Barbara Rosenberg says because
of how pure and refined the anthrax was, it had to be someone within the
American bio-defence program that knew about weaponising anthrax.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: It’s
the question of access and expertise. It had to be someone with access
to the Ames strain and the genetic evidence strongly suggests that that
Ames strain came out of the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious
Disease at Fort Detrick. The evidence has not all been published on this,
but from the way the FBI has behaved and concentrating on that laboratory
and from what I know this is by far the most likely source, so that means
someone who either works there now or who has worked there in the fairly
recent past, and that limits the number of possible suspects greatly, and
then further limiting the number is whether they had the expertise to actually
weaponise the material in the highly refined way that they did. And I’ve
spoken with people within the biodefence community who have done that manipulation,
who have weaponised anthrax and who say that the material in the letters
corresponds to the state-of-the-art in the United States, an art that they
don’t believe is possessed anywhere else in the world.

Brigid Glanville: It was just
after Rosenberg released her report with a profile of who she thought was
capable of doing it, that Steven J. Hatfill became a person of interest
to the FBI.

Many media reports claim Rosenberg,
along with certain journalists, including Nick Kristof from The New York
Times, were responsible for naming Hatfill. The leak of his name seems
to initially have come from inside the FBI itself.

A virologist, Steven Hatfill had
worked at Fort Detrick for 18 months on the Ebola virus, and Rosenberg
says would easily have access and the knowledge to weaponise anthrax. And
there are other reasons, from his background and from lies he has told,
that mean Hatfill can be made to look like a suspect.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: There’s
been a lot of investigation by reporters into his background, and what
has been uncovered makes one really worry about the poor security in the
US biodefence program, because this person not only has he worked and with
racist foreign governments in the past, but he has heavily falsified many
of his credentials. He does not have a PHD which he claimed he did; he
has not had various trainings and certificates that he claims he has had;
and he says that he was in the Special Forces but it turns out that he
was asked to leave after a very short tenure because of fraud. His whole
background is fraudulent and he has refused to answer any questions about
that. So aside from the question of the anthrax attacks, this is hardly
the kind of person that we should place our trust in and give access to
highly dangerous agents.

Brigid Glanville: All of this
is circumstantial evidence and Hatfill has his defenders, who say he is
being made a scapegoat and he’s made himself an easy target.

Hatfill is a loud, gregarious
character, very popular in his circle. However he was not truthful when
he claimed a brilliant career in the US military, bragging to a friend
he flew fighter planes and helicopters.

He also claimed he had a PhD from
Rhodes University which was later found to be false, and that he forged
signatures in the process.

Nevertheless, Steven Hatfill has
loudly and publicly insisted he is innocent of any connection with the
anthrax mystery. In August this year he held a press conference.

Steven Hatfill: I have devoted
much of my professional career to safeguarding men, women and children
from the scourge of different types of disease, from leukaemia to infectious
disease. I have had nothing to do in any way, shape or form, with the mailing
of these anthrax letters, and it is extremely wrong for anyone to contend
or suggest that I have. I am extremely proud of my service with the government,
and my efforts to help safeguard public health and protect our country
against the scourge of offensive biological warfare.

Brigid Glanville: Steven Hatfill
then turned his anger on Barbara Hatch Rosenberg for bringing him to the
attention of the authorities.

Steven Hatfill: In June 2002,
a woman named Barbara Hatch Rosenberg who affiliates herself with the Federation
of American Scientists saw fit to discuss me as a suspect in the anthrax
case in a meeting with FBI agents and Senate staffers. I don’t know Dr
Rosenberg, I have never met her, I have never spoken or corresponded with
this woman, and to my knowledge she is ignorant of my work and background
except in the very broadest of terms. The only thing I know about her views
is that she and I apparently differ on whether the United States should
sign onto a proposed modification of the International Biological Weapons
Convention. This was something I opposed to safeguard American industry,
and I believe she favoured.

Brigid Glanville: This issue of
the modification of the International Biological Weapons Convention may
be important. World leaders are meeting this month to try to get global
agreement on biological weapons inspections, after the anger and disappointment
of many, including Australia. America refused to sign the Convention about
a year ago. Barbara Rosenberg has been one of the many scientists who have
been extremely vocal about why it is important for America to sign the
convention, and she says the anthrax attacks prove her point.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: That
Convention is now toothless, it has no verification means at all, and the
international community has been trying over the past ten years to give
it teeth. Now last November and December the five-year-review of the Biological
Weapons Convention took place. On its final session in its final hour,
the US pulled out of a tentative agreement with the other parties to follow
up with annual meetings and discussions of what can be done to prevent
biological attacks. So there is no international agreement now, and because
of the confusion resulting from the US pull out that review conference
was suspended and will resume in November of this year. In preparation
for that, the US has just very recently announced that it wants that meeting
to take place in only one or two days, and it wants no outcome except a
decision about when to meet next four years from now. This is a shocking
position to take, for a country that has just been attacked itself by a
bioterrorist when the rest of the world, including the closest allies to
the United States, (Australia is one of them) have been pushing so hard
for an international joint effort to do something to prevent future attacks.

Brigid Glanville: Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg completely dismisses the accusation that she has named Hatfill
as a suspect in the anthrax letters, because of his stance that America
should not sign the convention. She says the two issues are completely
unconnected.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: Hatfill
has said that he thinks that I have been after him because we don’t agree
on the Biological Weapons Convention protocol that’s been under negotiation.
Of course that’s laughable, because I never knew or cared where he stood
on that. He’s not important in that respect; it’s where President Bush
stands that matters, and I don’t think he’s been a prime influence on the
Administration. I don’t really think this is a point worth making on your
program either. I mean it’s stupid, it’s ridiculous.

Brigid Glanville: But how ridiculous
is it?

This is the possible scenario:
you are a top defence scientist who thinks the US should sign the Biological
Weapons Convention and should spend more money on research. You put anthrax
out to draw attention to this important cause. But you don’t want to get
caught. So first of all you try to make it sound as if the anthrax has
been sent out by an Islamic fanatic. Then when that doesn’t work, you point
the finger at a hotheaded, slightly suss scientist of a fairly low rank.
And who also happens to think the US should not sign the Convention, the
perfect person to throw everyone off the scent.

It’s rather convoluted, but typical
of the possibilities being discussed in America.

Barbara Rosenberg says she’s only
sure of one thing: it’s someone from inside the system.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: I don’t
really care who a perpetrator is, I think he heeds to be apprehended and
brought to justice wherever he may come from, because that’s going to send
the right message to other bioterrorists that they can’t get away with
it. We have not done that yet, and I think this is extremely dangerous.
I do believe that all the evidence has pointed to its coming out of the
US Biodefence Program and that there was no evidence, only speculation,
that the source could have been elsewhere.

Brigid Glanville: Since the press
conference he gave in June, Stephen Hatfill has declined all media interviews
on advice of his solicitors. He’s now employed a spokesperson, Pat Clawson,
to comment. Clawson, a journalist, claims Hatfill has been an easy target
for the FBI to name someone and to take pressure of their year-long lack
of success.

Pat Clawson: The government has
said that they’ve got roughly 30 so-called persons of interest, again that
weird term that’s been used by Attorney-General, John Ashcroft.

Brigid Glanville: And they’ve
said a person of interest is not a suspect.

Pat Clawson: Well that’s correct,
a person of interest is not a suspect, but you know, it’s pretty darned
funny that Steve Hatfill is the only person who has been publicly identified
on national television by the Attorney-General of the United States, as
being a person of interest. Who are these other 29? We’ve never heard,
we don’t know who they are.

Brigid Glanville: Why has then
the FBI released his name?

Pat Clawson: That’s a darn good
question. You know, I’ve been a reporter here in the United States, an
investigative reporter covering the FBI and covering the criminal justice
system for over a quarter of a century, and it has been my experience that
when the FBI goes public on an investigation, in the way they have done
on the Hatfill case, it’s because their overall investigation has hit a
dead end, and they’re in serious trouble. So what they do is, they go public
to some extent, with some of the findings of their investigation as a way
of 1) putting pressure on an individual that they suspect might be involved
in some kind of a crime, and 2) frankly as a propaganda ploy to convince
the American people that the FBI is on the job and actually doing something,
when in fact their investigation’s hit a dead end. It’s most often when
these kinds of things happen, it’s a red herring, it’s just a propaganda
ploy.

Brigid Glanville: Other circumstantial
evidence that’s been found that could incriminate Hatfill is that he posed
for a magazine article dressed in a bioterrrorism suit, pretending to make
anthrax in his kitchen to warn officials of its danger. This has been explained
as a mere bit of fun, a favour he did for his friend who was writing the
particular article.

When the FBI conducted a search
on Hatfill’s home, they found a working novel on the hard drive of his
computer.

The story was centred around how
man conducted a bioterrorist attack in America, and how he got away with
it.

Pat Clawson says it was years
ago and it’s purely coincidental.

Pat Clawson: Yes and that again
came up from one our dinner conversations years ago, as an offshoot of
the magazine articles, or the newspaper articles that you referred to just
a few moments ago. After Steve had co-operated with Fred Reid of The Washington
Times, and Insight magazine, on the magazine and the newspaper articles,
we began discussing the idea, Gee this would make a great Tom Clancy style
novel, a bioterrorism attack on the United States.

Brigid Glanville: And how the
perpetrator covered his tracks.

Pat Clawson: And how the perpetrator
covered his tracks. So he went through, we kicked it around over drinks
and over dinner one night, and right, you know, ‘Gee this would be kind
of a cool subject for a novel’. I mean some of the people I hang out with
here in Washington, some of the people that Steve knows, are journalists,
and believe me, every journalist in this town’s working on a book on some
subject at some time. And the conversation to the direction that ‘Well,
you know the thing that really makes the Tom Clancy novels interesting
are all the technical detail that are in them, and we don’t have that kind
of technical knowledge, but Gee, Steve, you do; why don’t you do the book?’
So that’s how it came about. And indeed the book is not about anthrax,
it’s about a bubonic plague attack on Washington, D.C., anthrax is not
involved at all, and it has nothing to do with sending anything through
the mail. In this case the book is about a terrorist who goes into the
White House in a wheelchair that was equipped to spray bubonic plague germs,
and that was the basis of the novel.

Brigid Glanville: In the endless
tangled web of possibilities, the fact that an American couple contracted
bubonic plague last week now has the authorities scurrying again. While
the couple did contract it from a rat on their farm in New Mexico, authorities
were still put on full alert of a bioterrorism threat.

The theory that the anthrax situation
is connected to whether America will or won’t sign the Biological Weapons
Convention this month is one of plausible political possibilities. Another
is money. Somebody may have wanted a lot more money spent in the science
side of biological weapons and thought this was a good way to get the government’s
attention. It seems astonishing that anyone would risk the lives of tens
of thousands of Americans to raise awareness of research funding, but no-one
says we live in a particularly sane world.

Fort Detrick has faced funding
cuts in the last few years, and possibly anthrax research that hasn’t been
a threat for some years bore the brunt of it. Raising awareness of how
lethal the product can be is a sure way to get more money spent on bioterrorism.

In a private home in Delaware,
expert in anthrax, Dr Meryl Nass.

Meryl Nass: These anthrax attacks
were designed to seek publicity because they attacked the media, and I
think they chose the National Inquirer first because they knew that was
one media outlet that was unlikely to be muzzled and was going to write
about how it itself has been attacked.

Brigid Glanville: They’re like
a tabloid, aren’t they?

Meryl Nass: Yes, they’re a tabloid
newspaper. And then they chose some very high profile Senators to attack
so that Congress would probably be scared by the possibility of having
their own buildings, their own person attacked, and they are the ones who
vote funding for bioterrorism preparations and responses. And sure enough,
within a few weeks, Congress had voted billions of dollars for bioterrorism.

Brigid Glanville: Who have been
the beneficiaries of this bioterrorism scare? Who has received money?

Meryl Nass: Well basically everybody,
except myself, in the bioterrorism field has received money, I mean any
researcher who has had a good idea about responses to anthrax has gotten
money and as a result we are seeing an enormous number of new treatments
for anthrax, and that’s going to be very helpful. But you know, the money
could have been spent a year or two ago and we would have had an enormous
number of treatments for anthrax. We’ve got new anthrax vaccines, new smallpox
vaccines, the country has spent $850-million for new smallpox vaccines,
$1-billion has been given to the States to improve bioterrorism preparations,
there are almost $6-billion in the budget this year for bioterrorism.
So the money has been spread widely.

Brigid Glanville: Dr Nass strongly
believes it’s been done by someone very high up in the US intelligence
community.

Meryl Nass: I think first of all
there’s probably certain people that are just not going to be found. If
it was somebody who was really high up, let’s say William Patrick for example,
the country is not going to identify William Patrick as a perpetrator because
he used to run the offensive program and it would be too embarrassing to
say somebody like, I don’t think William Patrick did it, by the way, but
it would be too embarrassing to say that somebody on that level could have
done something like this.

Brigid Glanville: Do you think
it is someone on that level?

Meryl Nass: Well I think it’s
possible. Certainly it seems that the FBI investigation has had a lot of
fumbles and it may be that somebody at a high level has managed to keep
the FBI fumbling.

Brigid Glanville: And if the government
did know who did it, they would never admit to it when they could jeopardise
the public opinion on the stance they’ve taken on the Biological Weapons
Convention.

Meryl Nass: Well what’s the government?
I mean the government, there’s CIA, there’s FBI, there’s Fort Detrick,
there is Dugway; I think that there are almost certainly groups within
the branches of government who know more than they’re letting on. Whether
FBI has all this information is not clear, certainly evidence has come
out for instance that Dugway or Battel were producing powdered weaponised
anthrax in the United States. Apparently it took several months for the
FBI to learn that, and they should have known it the day after the attacks.

Background Briefing was not granted
an interview with anyone from the US Army Medical Research Institute for
Infectious Diseases, USAMRID at Fort Detrick. But we were able to speak
to Dr Richard Spertzel who worked in conjunction with them as a chief weapons
inspector for the United Nations Special Commission from 1994 to 1998.
And he thinks the anthrax letters were sent by someone from Iraq.

He says it’s unlikely to be an
American scientist, because contrary to what Professor Rosenberg says,
only four or five people in America are capable of making this quality
anthrax. Dr Spertzel came into the ABC studios in Washington to speak to
Background Briefing.

Richard Spertzel: Very few would
have the knowledge and even less would have the capability or opportunity
to make it. I contended from the beginning that that quality product could
not be made without the complicity of the government in the country in
which it was made, because otherwise too many people would have to know
about what was going on, and it wouldn’t remain a secret where there is
an open press.

Brigid Glanville: Dr Spertzel
also argues that Iraq had the perfect motive: that they could shut down
the US government and put Iraq in a much stronger position of power.

The FBI disagrees and have said
Iraq is not capable of making the anthrax, but Dr Spertzel says Iraq does
have the expertise.

Richard Spertzel: Iraq had the
full capability and the full knowledge. They knew exactly what to do in
order to get this. And one other important feature about that material,
that material has been described that the spores were individually coded
with the product and the only way I know you can get that is to add the
material to the liquid spores before they’re dried, and then you use a
spray dryer, a certain type of spray dryer. We know that Iraq knew how
to do this and that they had the right kind of spray dryer.

Brigid Glanville: What other evidence
since then has led you to believe that Iraq’s involved?

Richard Spertzel: My feeling on
Iraq is involved really relates to having all the capability, everything
that’s necessary to do it, as well as quite honestly, the motive. Now in
addition to that, the al Qaeda contacts with Iraq dates back perhaps as
early as 1993, according to defectors. There’s another indication, and
I think the evidence is too strong that there has been a steady and continued
relationship between the two, and that would have provided Iraq with the
opportunity to have what I call delivery boys, that is the al Qaeda. Just
because the al Qaeda organisation and the Iraqi State may be at separate
ends of the spectrum, or in Islamic religion, it doesn’t mean that necessity
doesn’t make strange bedfellows.

Brigid Glanville: Strange bedfellows
indeed. During the interview with Background Briefing, the FBI Domestic
Terrorism Chief, Tom Carey, wouldn’t elaborate on Dr Spertzel’s views.
But he did say that FBI investigations showed that Iraq could not be involved
and that people have wrong information about what Iraq possesses.

Tom Carey: What I would say is
the information that came out there that led weapons inspectors and others
to suspect the Iraq connection was wrong information. Now it doesn’t say
we still wouldn’t look for any potential connection to Iraq, or rather
any other States sponsored terrorist, but what they specifically referred
to didn’t exist, and it was misinformation.

Brigid Glanville: Many scientists,
anthrax experts and journalists have heavily criticised the FBI, particularly
for the number of leaks that have come out about the investigation. The
FBI is not considered a reliable investigator, nor a reliable source of
information.

All of them have said the leak
to the media about the search on Hatfill’s home only 24 hours before it
happened, was inexcusable. Professor Rosenberg was working closely in the
beginning of the investigations with the FBI providing information she
had learnt from the Biodefence community. And even Rosenberg is critical
of the FBI’s work in solving the mystery.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg: It appears
to me and I have said so on several occasions in the past, that the FBI
was carrying out highly publicised activities just to provide evidence
to the public that they were doing something, but that these activities
were essentially meaningless. One of them was to send letters to 43,000
microbiologists in the country when they had to know that the possible
perpetrators were among a very small number of roughly 30 people connected
to biodefence. Another one was passing out samples of handwriting by the
thousands to see if anyone recognised it, when it was obvious that the
handwriting had been disguised. And I think that the publicised search
of suspects apartments, several searches recently, may or may not have
fallen into that category. I don’t think it was necessary for them to make
that person’s name public and I think it was unfortunate it was unfair,
because they have done similar searches of other people’s apartments and
homes and those names have not become public.

Brigid Glanville: The issue of
whether or not the FBI are involved in a cover-up and whether they are
manipulating public opinion by leaking misinformation crops up time and
again.

When Background Briefing interviewed
FBI Section Chief Tom Carey, we asked him to talk about, for one thing,
the leaks about Steven Hatfill and whether or not they were set up by the
FBI as to get every possible publicity advantage out of their investigations
on him. Tom Carey says the FBI is not responsible for the leaks.

Tom Carey: We’re not taking any
responsibility for that. As far as I’m concerned, if a person goes before
the media himself and discusses what he views his concerns with an investigation,
then that’s all on him, and I’ve watched Hatfill as I’ve watched other
people get up and make media presentations and point the finger at the
FBI, and as attorneys say, We’ve done this, and we’ve done that, we’ve
done the next thing, you have not seen the FBI come back and respond to
that, nor have you see anybody from the US Attorney’s Office respond to
that. And we’re not going to respond that way. When we respond, we
will respond in court.

Brigid Glanville: While the FBI
won’t claim responsibility for leaks to the media, the analysis of evidence
coming from top scientists seems to indicate it was someone or some people
high up in the United States military or science community that sent the
letters. Whoever it was had the knowledge to produce anthrax and did it
well, because the FBI only has circumstantial evidence, with no witnesses,
no fingerprints, or DNA to charge someone.

And as Tom Carey says, without
this, murder is hard to prove.

Tom Carey: While circumstantial
evidence helps build a case, but at the end of the day you want to have
what we call direct evidence, and a significant amount of direct evidence,
along with circumstantial evidence in which you’re going to bring somebody
to trial.

Brigid Glanville: So what would
be an example of circumstantial evidence?

Tom Carey: Well circumstantial
evidence could be testimony from other individuals that an individual had
access say to a room where anthrax was stored. Or the records would indicate
that the person had access, versus real evidence would be their fingerprint
on the letter. On the letter that was inside one of the envelopes, that
would be the real direct physical evidence.

Brigid Glanville: And there obviously
was no fingerprints, there wasn’t much of that kind of direct evidence?

Tom Carey: No, there was next
to no physical evidence, nothing that we could use.

Brigid Glanville: No matter who
the experts, weapons inspectors or reporters believe who did it, and whether
or not it was done by a top military scientist and the government won’t
admit to it, the simple fact is, for whatever reason we may never know
the truth.

The FBI have admitted there’s
possibly only about 20 people who had the knowledge or expertise to conduct
these attacks. Given that, you can’t help but wonder what the real reason
is why they haven’t found someone.

Tom Carey: I wish I could say
that somebody was going to be arrested this afternoon and arraigned tomorrow,
and I don’t know when that’s going to be. The only thing I can tell you
is that we’re still working it very aggressively. It’s not just the FBI,
the US Postal Service, State and local police from a number of jurisdictions,
our foreign friends and allies, have provided assistance and continue to
provide assistance. This is still a very aggressive investigation and a
lot of work is ongoing.

Brigid Glanville: Can you see
why people are asking the question, Why haven’t they found anyone? You
know, the FBI, the world’s top intelligence.

Tom Carey: We’re the FBI, the
world’s top investigative agency, not intelligence agency. There’s a slight
difference there, but the bottom line is that at the end of the day no
matter how good you are, you have to work with the evidence that you can
develop, and there is very scant evidence and this a long road to hoe.
It’s been months and months and months. Just on the science part of the
investigation, and again not being a scientist there were things that I
presume naively we would have answers to in three or four months that might
be something we could use to help our criminal investigators. There are
tests and science experiments going on now that will still be months from
resolution, that may or may not help move the investigation forward.

Brigid Glanville: If you’d like
the move the investigation forward, go to the Background Briefing website
and have a look at the letters and other links to evidence.

The program’s Co-ordinating producer
is Linda McGinness; Research by Paul Bolger; Technical producer, David
Bates and Executive Producer, Kirsten Garrett.

You’ve been listening to Background
Briefing on ABC Radio National. Now back from America, I’m Brigid Glanville.